Cryptography Next Generation APIs and PlatformNotSupportedException

[adamjstone]

Question re. CNG APIs in .NET Standard

Documentation for numerous APIs in System.Security.Cryptography.Cng indicate that PlatformNotSupportedException is possible but do not list the formally supported platforms. Which platforms do not support use of the CNG APIs?

Thanks!

[vcsjones]

Which platforms do not support use of the CNG APIs

CNG is Windows-specific. The CNG types (RSACng, etc) will only work on Windows, and throw PlatformNotSupportedException on non-Windows platforms.

If you want cross-platform cryptographic primitives, the factory methods on the primitives should be used. For example:

using (var rsa = System.Security.Cryptography.RSA.Create())
{
   //Use `rsa` here
}

and Create will give you an RSA implementation that will work for the current platform it is running on. The same approach works for other cryptographic primitives like ECDsa, Aes, etc.

[adamjstone]

Thank you.