Ah, I see.
Forgive me for being a bit blunt in my previous post though.
But, yes, the encryption works in that way, sort of. That is, the cryptographic provider and context strings might have change, just as the key values, since the time the first post in this thread has been made. Also the file format of encrypted logs has changed. But the prinicple is just the same. Deltailed pseudo-code to read a version 1 encrypted log can be seen in that first post in this thread.
If you're interested in using the Cryptography APIs in VB I can suggest two very good books:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672318369 and
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471381896
But they are not exactly aimed for the novice user though. Also see
http://www.cryptovb.com/
As for the VB code itself: yes declarations of variables and APIs are very important and must always be included. A wrong type declaration of a variable can make or break an entire code.
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