04 December, 2008

Why cripple the .NET RSA implementation?

I just found out that `RSACryptoServiceProvider`, the RSA implementation in .NET, does not allow you to use a private key to encrypt data. I'm no cryptographic expert, but I do know how asymmetric key algorithms like RSA work, and that you can use a private key for encryption. That's how signing works. But why cripple the implementation and limit it to just signing?