Encrypting data

[SeeSharp Bint]

Visual Studio 2005, dotnet, c#. Microsoft SQL Server. Windows XP forms
application.

Temporarily, for my database application, I have been storing the various
elements of database connection items like datasource,password,userid as
plain strings in the registry.
I'd now like to make these secure against people reading them.
I thought of encrypting/decrypting each string when i write to the registry
but I wouldnt know where to find a useable algorithm.
What's the easiest, secure way to store these values please?

Also, I download images from the database and cache them on each local
machine in a data directory so there's no bandwidth hogging.
At the moment they sit there as .jpg,*.bmp files and can be viewed just by
opening them.
What would be a sensible way of encrypting these?

thanks

 

[Alun Harford]

Visual Studio 2005, dotnet, c#. Microsoft SQL Server. Windows XP forms
application.

Temporarily, for my database application, I have been storing the various
elements of database connection items like datasource,password,userid as
plain strings in the registry.
I'd now like to make these secure against people reading them.
I thought of encrypting/decrypting each string when i write to the registry
but I wouldnt know where to find a useable algorithm.
What's the easiest, secure way to store these values please?

Also, I download images from the database and cache them on each local
machine in a data directory so there's no bandwidth hogging.
At the moment they sit there as .jpg,*.bmp files and can be viewed just by
opening them.
What would be a sensible way of encrypting these?

There is no way of encrypting this data usefully. You have nowhere safe
you can store the key so that the user cannot just decrypt it.

Alun Harford

 

[rossum]

Visual Studio 2005, dotnet, c#. Microsoft SQL Server. Windows XP forms
application.

Temporarily, for my database application, I have been storing the various
elements of database connection items like datasource,password,userid as
plain strings in the registry.
I'd now like to make these secure against people reading them.

How secure and against what people? ROT-13 or Base64 are far from
secure but can prevent casual browsing. System.Security.SecureString
might be of use to you as well. For more than that use AES (=
Rijndael) in CBC or CTR mode.

I thought of encrypting/decrypting each string when i write to the registry
but I wouldnt know where to find a useable algorithm.
What's the easiest, secure way to store these values please?

Either SecureString or one of the built-in encryption methods, AES for
preference. You may need Base-64 to avoid problems with non-printing
characters if you use AES.

Also, I download images from the database and cache them on each local
machine in a data directory so there's no bandwidth hogging.
At the moment they sit there as .jpg,*.bmp files and can be viewed just by
opening them.
What would be a sensible way of encrypting these?

AES again, in either CBC or CTR mode.

rossum