XCrypt - Encryption and decryption class wrapper

• Download XCrypt-noexe.zip - 91.2 KB
• Download source code - 181.2 KB

Introduction

This article is built on top of 'XCrypt' -- the legendary cryptography wrapper which had been around in CodeProject for a while. Unfortunately the original author of the article has left it unattended for several years. I brought it to the attention of CP Team here: http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/4409016/Article-Adoption.aspx  and as per the guidance I am submitting this alternative branch. 

XCrypt helps as a generic encryption and decryption wrapper for .NET applications. Besides that, it adds the following two algorithms (which are not part of the .NET Base Class Library):

• Blowfish
• Twofish 

As of this writing, I did have an observation of another algorithm called 'Blakesharp' (http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/286937/BlakeSharp-A-Csharp-Implementation-of-the-BLAKE-Ha). I have taken a humble initiative to get XCrypt updated in having able to use this algorithm too. 

Background 

1. Basic concepts, BlowFish, TwoFish: Credits to the parent XCrypt
2. Blakesharp:  http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/286937/BlakeSharp-A-Csharp-Implementation-of-the-BLAKE-Ha 

Using the code

The sample code initializes the engine to 3DES, you also can call InitializeEngine again to reset the engine to a different algorithm. 

XCryptEngine xe = new XCryptEngine();
...
xe.InitializeEngine(XCryptEngine.AlgorithmType.TripleDES);

enc_str = xe.Encrypt(src_str);
dec_str = xe.Decrypt(enc_str);

xe.DestroyEngine(); 

NuGet:

You can get the latest reference to this assembly through NuGet here. 

Points of Interest 

1. XCrypt earns the credit of making me learn different encryption algorithms besides kindling an interest to explore on them. 
2. .NET has a good cryptography library but the paucity of documentation in MSDN as an end-to-end solution makes you run pillar to post whilst trying to decide on a particular algorithm. XCrypt endeavors to fulfill the gap. 

Change log: 

The following are the changes from the parent program (XCrypt): 

1. Included the two BlakeSharp algorithms into XCrypt as I had highlighted. 
2. The Test Application had hard-coded 'This is a test string' as the initial value. To make it a bit more realistic I have replaced that with srcText.Text = Environment.UserName.Length > 0 ? Environment.UserName : "Hello World";.
3. The Test Application had bloated piece of code that the algorithm names were repeatedly hard-bound. I have tried replacing that with a quick and small reflection code (LoadEnumMembers()).
4. The Test Application had a bug that for hash where decryption would not be possible. I changed this by exposing two more public methods disabling the Decrypt button for the same.  
5. I have removed the setup and other projects which might not be of utility for a lot of users.  

History  

• First update built on XCrypt in a humble endeavor to make it a one-stop lookup for a cryptography library in .NET.
• Added a quick clipboard support to the application. 
• 8th May 2013: Now you can have XCrypt from within a using block of the application so that memory is elegantly reclaimed.