If you want to do protection manually, you can use a class ProtectedData. Some code:
class ConnectionStringProtector
{
readonly byte[] _salt = new byte[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 };
readonly Encoding _encoding = Encoding.Unicode;
readonly DataProtectionScope _scope = DataProtectionScope.LocalMachine;
public string Unprotect(string str)
{
var protectedData = Convert.FromBase64String(str);
var unprotected = ProtectedData.Unprotect(protectedData, _salt, _scope);
return _encoding.GetString(unprotected);
}
public string Protect(string unprotectedString)
{
var unprotected = _encoding.GetBytes(unprotectedString);
var protectedData = ProtectedData.Protect(unprotected, _salt, _scope);
return Convert.ToBase64String(protectedData);
}
}
here is a simple test:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var originalConnectionString = "original string";
var protector = new ConnectionStringProtector();
var protectedString = protector.Protect(originalConnectionString);
Console.WriteLine(protectedString);
Console.WriteLine();
var unprotectedConnectionString = protector.Unprotect(protectedString);
Console.WriteLine(unprotectedConnectionString);
Console.WriteLine("Press ENTER to finish");
Console.ReadLine();
}