I've always been fascinated by encryption & compression, but my favorite is probably the cryptographic hash function. A hash function is a one-way algorithm that takes an input of any size and always produces the same size output. It is one-way in that there is information loss -- you can't easily go from the output to the input again. The cryptographic hash is a more secure version of the hash function. It is most often used in signing to validate that data hasn't been modified.  ...

Build a secure Multi-device Application Using Embedded encrypted InterBase ToGo In Part 1, we showed how to add database and column level encryption to an InterBase ToGo database.  In this Part 2, we show how to build a secure multi-device application that uses our encrypted InterBase database. In Part 1, we saw how to get our InterBase ToGo Deployment license.  Now we show the steps to build a secure multi-device application using RAD Studio, Delphi or C++ Builder and our ...

RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin – App Tethering using Encryption Hooks Introduction App Tethering was first introduced in RAD Studio XE6 as a way to extend your VCL and FireMonkey (FMX) apps to other companion applications.  The companion apps can be Windows, Mac OS X and/or FMX multi-device apps. RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin adds these App Tethering Improvements: Two new network adapters that provide multicast support for IPv4 and IPv6. You can configure yo...

The RAD Studio XE8 Summer (Northern Hemisphere) and Winter (Southern Hemisphere) of Security!The RAD Studio XE8 Summer/Winter of Security! This blog post contains information and links covering secure development topics for Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio XE8 developers. You’ll find secure computing introductory topics and starting information for InterBase database, components, libraries, Backend as a Service (BaaS), Cloud, App Tethering and more. Throughout the Summer (or Winter if you live...

During my CodeRage 8 "Secure DataSnap Development" session I'm demonstrating different levels of security in DataSnap architecture. Communication Protocol: DataSnap supports three different communication protocols: TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS. Choosing the HTTPS protocol that is implemented using SSL (“Secure Sockets Layer”) adds encryption to the communication between client and server, making it a secure solution. Two other protocols – TCP/IP and HTTP – are inherently not safe and such a commun...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote What Is Homomorphic Encryption, and Why Should I Care? In that post, I promised to share my C# implementation of the algorithm from Craig Gentry's CACM article. Before I can do that, though, I need to explain some of the math involved. Perhaps surprisingly, it's actually very simple. (I say "surprisingly" because much of the math and technical papers on encryption is decidedly not simple, including that of Gentry's first fully homomorphic scheme, which was based...

The March 2010 issue of the Communications of the ACM includes a technical paper with an introduction entitled "A First Glance of Cryptography's Holy Grail" (ACM subscription required). That's enough to catch my attention. The paper itself, Computing Arbitrary Functions of Encrypted Data, describes a relatively new algorithm for homomorphic encryption. Although these words may be unfamiliar to many, the subject matter is terribly important, because, like public-key encryption, which paved the...

On Wednesday December 9, I gave a webinar discussing: How do you ensure secure data protection for our applications using InterBase? We all want to develop secure, robust applications with resilient data protection and robust data management. And one of the best ways to achieve this is through solid software design and database technology that provides strong data encryption and automatic disaster recovery capabilities. Topics covered were: Structure applications to enhance data security...