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What is entropy in DPAPI?
Solution: Entropy is a secondary key that is specific to the application that is protecting data. For example, Your application may encrypt data under UserA. If My application wished to decrypt that data under UserA, there really isn’t anything to stop my from doing so, as the DPAPI uses the users key.
What does Dpapi stand for?
Data Protection API
The Data Protection API (DPAPI) helps to protect data in Windows 2000 and later operating systems. DPAPI is used to help protect private keys, stored credentials (in Windows XP and later), and other confidential information that the operating system or a program wants to keep confidential.
What encryption does Dpapi use?
Triple-DES
DPAPI uses Triple-DES. It uses proven cryptographic routines, such as the strong Triple-DES algorithm in CBC mode, the strong SHA-1 algorithm, and the PBKDF2 password-based key derivation routine. It uses proven cryptographic constructs to protect data.
How does the Entropy Key in DPAPI work?
This key is either combined with some other data in a hash to create your Entropy Key, or used to decrypt the entropy key. You actually can have the key change with a new revision of your application, as long as you keep the old key for decrypting the existing key.
What do you need to know about the DPAPI interface?
Every programmer implementing DPAPI interface must realize that the system only encrypts data. An application must provide a solution for storing the returned DPAPI blobs, including reliable hiding of optional entropy data if it is used. DPAPI was created with the view of many aspects in terms of security.
How is the DPAPI used to encrypt data?
However, the DPAPI can help us greatly as it allows us to delegate the responsibility for the management of the primary encryption key to the OS. There are two main approaches when encrypting data using the DPAPI. You can choose to use one of the following two ‘Scopes’.
What does the DPAPI stand for in APIs?
DPAPI is an acronym for Data Protection Application Programming Interface. So loosely speaking the DPAPI is an API that is all about protecting (encrypting) data.