Application Security in .NET Succinctly

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for architects, developers, and other information technology professionals who design and build security components and layers of .NET solutions.

Why is this book relevant today?

Three main problems that plague developers writing security-focused .NET code today are:

• Many security developers are not as familiar or comfortable with the material in this book as they ideally should be, regardless of seniority or job title. This book tries to fill some of the common knowledge gaps, or at least provide a good refresher of .NET security practices.

• What many security developers believe to be the right thing to do can sometimes be wrong, insecure, or both. This book highlights some of these cases, and presents them as a learning opportunity to the reader.

• Even the most knowledgeable and aware security developers are often unable to produce quality .NET implementations that are sane, simple, reusable, and secure. This book addresses many widespread security knowledge gaps and provides practical guidance and high-quality .NET implementations of cryptographic primitives via the Inferno crypto library.

Inferno is a modern, open-sourced cryptographic library for .NET, available on GitHub and NuGet. Inferno does .NET crypto right, and offers a misuse-resistant API with safe algorithms, modes, and choices. We encourage you to read Inferno’s design goals.

What makes this book different?

• Original and relevant content, which has not been covered properly in other books.

• Succinctness. There are many excellent books and other learning materials dedicated to introductory and foundational topics. Detailed coverage of many concepts not directly inscope is not provided, but links are to Wikipedia or other relevant sources are included when such peripheral concepts appear.

• The only math required is arithmetic (we promise).

• It’s based on real-world experience implementing .NET security. Sometimes we bend the rules or try an unusual technique, but we pick our battles and compromises carefully.