Re: Where to securely store encryption key?

This is discussed in great detail in :
"Writing Secure Code", 2nd Edn. Howard et. al.
There is no way to securely store a key in software or in the OS used for
encryption.
You need some secret which is not stored in the file-system, registry etc...

Depending on if your software can prompt for the key, a solution is to use a
good strong password-derived symmetric key(again discussed in detail in book
above).

- Mitch Gallant

<harishashim@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1158043709.597558.171600@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am using VC++ on VS .NET 2003 experimenting with various way of using
cryptography.

At the moment I am facing a paradox due to the following.

I have a secrete message. I want to encrypt this message using
symmetric algorithm let say AES. The encrypted message is accessible
to the user while the secrete message must stay secrete.

For this process I will need to specify a key for the encryption
process.Since my software need to do both encryption and decryption I
need to have the key available in my software.

The paradox here is that now I have to protect the key. So how should I
do this? I have consider the following together with the argument
against it.

1. Embed the key in the source code. Argument: Source code can be
reverse engineerd. The key will be known and can be used to decrypt the
encrypted message.

2. Save key in the filesystem, not encrypted. Argument: User can open
it, read the plain text key and use the key to decrypt the encrypted
message.

3. Save key in the filesystem, encrypted. Argument: If I do this, I
will have another key to secure. So this is chicken and egg situation.

4. Save key in registry. Argument: User with administrator access can
open it, read the key and use the key to decrypt the encrypted message.

I am fairly new to cryptography, please show me the way!

Thanks in advance.

*pst : At the moment hardware solution like smart card is out of the
question



.

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