AspNetCore.Docs/aspnetcore/security/data-protection/extensibility/misc-apis.md

title	author	description	ms.author	ms.date	uid
Miscellaneous ASP.NET Core Data Protection APIs	rick-anderson	Learn about the ASP.NET Core Data Protection ISecret interface.	riande	10/14/2016	security/data-protection/extensibility/misc-apis

Miscellaneous ASP.NET Core Data Protection APIs

[!WARNING] Types that implement any of the following interfaces should be thread-safe for multiple callers.

ISecret

The ISecret interface represents a secret value, such as cryptographic key material. It contains the following API surface:

• Length: int

• Dispose(): void

• WriteSecretIntoBuffer(ArraySegment<byte> buffer): void

The WriteSecretIntoBuffer method populates the supplied buffer with the raw secret value. The reason this API takes the buffer as a parameter rather than returning a byte[] directly is that this gives the caller the opportunity to pin the buffer object, limiting secret exposure to the managed garbage collector.

The Secret type is a concrete implementation of ISecret where the secret value is stored in in-process memory. On Windows platforms, the secret value is encrypted via CryptProtectMemory.