Email Credentials Stored In Plain Text

[Frinavale]

Hello Everyone,

Currently my VB.NET project has two aspx pages that store strings containing my email server access credentials.

I'd like to change this somehow so that these credentials are more secure.

I've tried encrypting them like one would encrypt an impersonated users credentials but the emails are not delivered.

I'm not getting an error when I send the email...everything appears to be fine really until I check my email and note that no email is in my inbox.

Has anyone done this before?

I'm really confused as to how I'm going to successfully encrypt these credentials.

Thanks in advance,

-Frinny

[Frinavale]

Hello Everyone,

Currently my VB.NET project has two aspx pages that store strings containing my email server access credentials.

...

Has anyone done this before?
I'm really confused as to how I'm going to successfully encrypt these credentials.

Thanks in advance,

-Frinny

I've fixed this problem. After trying out 50 wrong ways to solve this problem I finally ended up doing something really simple to encrypt these credentials.

I ended up placing the credentials into <appSettings> in the web.config file and then encrypting the <appSettings> with the aspnet_regiis tool.

I learned how to do the encrypting on this site.

So basically I added this to my web.config

<appSettings>
    <add key="EmailUserName" value="userName"/>
    <add key="EmailPassword" value="password" />
</appSettings>
 

Then using the Visual Studio command prompt went to the directory where my web site is on my web server and typed:

aspnet_regiis -pe "appSettings" -app "/ApplicationName" -prov "DataProtectionConfigurationProvider"


That resulted in

<appSettings configProtectionProvider="DataProtectionConfigurationProvider">
    <EncryptedData>
      <CipherData>
        <CipherValue>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</CipherValue>
      </CipherData>
    </EncryptedData>
  </appSettings>
 

Which I'm happy with.

:)

Cheers!

-Frinny

[kenobewan]

Hi Frinny,

Thanks for sharing the solution :).