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I'm relatively new to C# and am attempting to adapt a text encryption algorithm I designed in wxMaxima into a Binary encryption program in C# using Visual Studio forms. Because I am new to reading/writing binary files, I am lacking in knowledge regarding what happens when I try to read or write to a filestream.

For example, instead of encrypting a text file as I've done in the past, say I want to encrypt an executable or any other form of binary file.

Here are a few questions I don't understand:

  1. When I open a file stream and use binaryreader will it read in an absolute duplicate of absolutely everything in the file? I want to be able to, for example, read in an entire file, delete the original file, then create a new file with the old name and write the entire binary stream back. Will this reproduce the original file exactly or will there be some sort of corruption that must otherwise be accounted for?

  2. Because it's an encryption program, I was hoping to add in a feature that would low-level "format" the original file before deleting it so it would be theoretically inaccessible by combing the physical data of a harddisk. If I use binarywriter to overwrite parts of the original file with gibberish will it be put on the same spot on the harddisk or will the file become fragmented and actually just redirect via the FAT to some other portion of the harddisk? Obviously there's no point in overwriting the original file with gibberish if it's not over-writing the original cluster on the harddisk.

ThisHandleNotInUse
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1 Answers1

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For your first question: A BinaryReader is not what you want. The name is a bit misleading: it "Reads primitive data types as binary values in a specific encoding." You probably want a FileStream.

Regarding the second question: That will not be easy: please see the "How SDelete Works" section of SDelete for an explanation. Brief extract in case that link breaks in the future:

"Securely deleting a file that has no special attributes is relatively straight-forward: the secure delete program simply overwrites the file with the secure delete pattern. What is more tricky is securely deleting Windows NT/2K compressed, encrypted and sparse files, and securely cleansing disk free spaces.

Compressed, encrypted and sparse are managed by NTFS in 16-cluster blocks. If a program writes to an existing portion of such a file NTFS allocates new space on the disk to store the new data and after the new data has been written, deallocates the clusters previously occupied by the file."

Andrew Morton
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  • Thank you very much for that information. I was thinking you would open a filestream then use binaryreader to read it. I was concerned about the NTFS system doing that (can't believe I called it FAT - that's how long it's been since I've done any reading on rudimentary computer science architecture). I will do more research and see if I can create something that allows me to access the harddisk by pointer/ref. I'm not really using this for anything - just making it to hone skills. But it wouldn't hurt to give it out so I'd prefer to give people that option. – ThisHandleNotInUse Jan 18 '14 at 19:28