Both are static members. If you use the first method, it will randomly generate the salt characters for you and then call the second method. Salt, in this case, are two letters that are used to provide some extra randomness for the encryption, and allow you to repeat any previous encryption (if you also have the text that was encrypted). Another thing users should know is that the text to encrypt should not be more then 8 characters long. If your text is longer than 8 characters, only the first 8 are used and the rest is ignored.