Question

How to encrypt data using sha256

Answer 1

For a given string key and a given string baseString then you encrypt the base string as follows:

byte[] keyBytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key);            
System.Security.Cryptography.HMACSHA256 sha1 = new System.Security.Cryptography.HMACSHA256(keyBytes);

byte[] hashBytes = sha1.ComputeHash(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(baseString));

string hash = Convert.ToBase64String(hashBytes);

Note: this is just standard .Net code, and not specific to Windows Phone 7.

Note 2: this however doesn’t work in Windows 8 Store apps, but that is another store all together.