How to Use AspEncrypt as a Client-site ActiveX Control Part 2

How to Use AspEncrypt as a Client-site ActiveX Control Part 2

What is AspEncrypt?

AspEncrypt is an Active Server component that brings security to your applications through encryption. With AspEncrypt, you can encrypt data, send S/MIME-based secure mail, compute one-way hash values, generate and verify digital signatures, issue and manage X.509 digital certificates, and more. This component can be used in an ASP/ASP.NET or VB environment on Windows 2000/XP/2003/2008/Vista/7.

In this article we will tell you about “How to Use AspEncrypt as a Client-site ActiveX Control”. We divide this discussion into two different articles. You can find the previous article in here.

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Working with User Certificates

The main reason why XEncrypt was introduced is to provide easy and safe access to the user’s private keys residing on the client machine. XEncrypt enables the user to generate digital signatures and decrypt data with her private key using the IE browser. The private key never has to leave the user’s machine, so its security is not jeopardized.

The best way to work with private keys is to obtain a digital certificate (digital ID). Every time you enroll for a certificate, a key pair (comprised of a public and private keys) is created on your local machine. The public key wrapped in a “certificate request file” is sent to a certification authority (CA) which issues the certificate and sends it back to you. Finally, the newly issued certificate is installed on your machine pointing to its original private key.

Once a certificate has been obtained, you can start using its private key to perform digital signing or data decryption. The code sample http://localhost/aspencrypt/client_side/sign.asp demonstrates how you can use XEncrypt to compute a digital signature on a text string using your certificate’s private key.

This code snipped uses the previously unseen method PickCertificate exposed by XEncrypt. This method uses the undocumented CryptoAPI method CryptUIDlgSelectCertificateW which displays a list of certificates from a given certificate store.

PickCertificate’s second argument is a combination of flags that hide certain columns in the certificate list. In our case we hide all columns except “Issued To”, “Issued By” and “Expiration Date.” The third and fourth arguments are optional. They specify captions displayed by the title and body of the certificate list dialog.

The file sign.asp invokes the script verify.asp which verifies the signature against a certificate’s public key. For this script to work, you must export your signer certificate to a .cer file. To do that, bring up the certificate list, double-click on the certificate you want to export, open the Details tab and click the button “Copy to file.” When asked whether you want to export the private key, say “No.” Place the resultant .cer file on the web server for the script verify.asp to use. Below is the signature verification code:

Previous: How to Use AspEncrypt as a Client-site ActiveX Control Part 1

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Anjali Punjab

Anjali Punjab is a freelance writer, blogger, and ghostwriter who develops high-quality content for businesses. She is also a HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certified and Google Analytics Qualified Professional.

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