Windows Mail APIs

[Guest]

Hell all,

General: What is a well documented MS link that documents (all) the new
Vista APIs - esp for Windows Mail? IE7?

Specifically: Developing an app that composes windows mail accounts. Will
take user inputted password. Need a way to encrypt it into a binary string
to be placed in the oeaccount file...so windows mail will use and understand
it.

I've asked this question when vista was still early in beta, perhaps now
there is an exposed api to handle this.

--
Thanks so much,

george

_________________________
George S. Lockwood
Lead Client Developer
peoplePC, an EarthLink company

 

[Steve Cochran]

Hi George,

I don't think they will let us know this information.

The acccount stuff is here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms715237(en-us).aspx and it
clearly indicates that the password field supposed to be blank:

"A BINARY is a series of hexadecimal digit pairs, each representing a single
character. 0 is the only valid entry for binary data within an .oeaccount
file intended for use to create a Windows Mail user account."

So I doubt they are going to tell us how to do this. I haven't figured it
out yet either. <EG>

cheers,

steve

 

[Guest]

Hello Steve,

Yes that old document; I first read that back in April. Found it useful but
for one thing -Password persisitance. I asked around about encryption apis
to be told to wait until Vista begins to move from beta status.

If you suspicions are correct, how then would a developer construct a
complete mail account? How would...

A thought just came to me...if we compose a mail account (with a '0' for
password) then used Mail to use the account....would Mail sense the 'blank'
password and prompt the user with some UI to complete the account??

Do you know?

Seems to me that MS would not be exposing a security risk if it provided an
api for text to binary password encryption. I am hopeful we can uncover it!

gsl

--
Thanks so much,

george

_________________________
George S. Lockwood
Lead Client Developer
peoplePC, an EarthLink company

 

[Steve Cochran]

Hi Gary,

Hello Steve,

Yes that old document; I first read that back in April. Found it useful
but
for one thing -Password persisitance. I asked around about encryption
apis
to be told to wait until Vista begins to move from beta status.

If you suspicions are correct, how then would a developer construct a
complete mail account? How would...

A thought just came to me...if we compose a mail account (with a '0' for
password) then used Mail to use the account....would Mail sense the
'blank'
password and prompt the user with some UI to complete the account??

Do you know?

Yeah, the point is that if you have the username information in there and
the account information, then the user gets prompted the first time for the
password, and WInMail then encrypts that and sticks it into the oeaccount
file. Try it and you'll see it works that way.

I found it rather annoying as I want to share the message store between
partitions, and because each OS has its own encryption key, I have to copy
over the oeaccount files in the store to match the OS before starting
WinMail, so I can get it not to prompt for the passwords.

Seems to me that MS would not be exposing a security risk if it provided
an
api for text to binary password encryption. I am hopeful we can uncover
it!

I'm going to be digging some <EG>. Plus I'll follow more traditional
routes and ask around.

cheers,

steve

 

[Guest]

Hello Steve,

Thanks. yes I'd still like to know about an encryption api, too. Have the
ability to set the password when we (dev'ers) wish is the best and "right"
thing.

Did I read that you were going to investigate further? Maybe I can too.
Where are you going to ask and look? Is there Microsoft Developer Support
Team? a link?

By the way, are you affiliated with Microsoft?

--
Thanks so much,

george

_________________________
George S. Lockwood
Lead Client Developer
peoplePC, an EarthLink company

 

[Steve Cochran]

Hi George,

I'm an MS-MVP for OE / WinMail (see www.oehelp.com). I have some contacts
within MS by "virtue" of that and I'll look into it.

I think the answer is that they aren't going to tell us, but I will ask
anyway.

steve

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Steve.

Yes please let me know what you find out!

--
Thanks so much,

george

_________________________
George S. Lockwood
Lead Client Developer
peoplePC, an EarthLink company

 

[Steve Cochran]

Hi George,

I got the opportunity to ask today, and as expected, I got stonewalled and
told that the user must fill in the field and it couldn't be filled in ahead
of that.

I told them I would have to figure it out on my own then, but it would be a
lot nicer if they'd just tell me.

That didn't work either. I'm sure its doable, so how is the next pursuit.

Sorry not to have better news, but I expected as much.

cheers,

steve