iStern Blog

Finally after a long brake from bloggign here is a little starter post.

It is actually a fairly simple task to encrypt your .net connection strings using the aspnet_regiis.exe. you can find it in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\(Framework(32/64))\(.net version fx :4.0.30319)\aspnet_regiis.exe

So what I usually have, is a little .bat file placed in the www-root folder see the file content below

echo Encrypting app_config/connectionstrings.config
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -pef “connectionStrings” .
Pause

running the bat file will transform your connectionstring from

<add name="core" connectionString="user id=user;password=password;Data Source=(server);Database=Sitecore_Core" />

<add name="master" connectionString="user id=user;password=password;Data Source=(server);Database=Sitecore_Master" />

<add name="web" connectionString="user id=user;password=password;Data Source=(server);Database=Sitecore_Web" />

to something like this

<connectionStrings configProtectionProvider="RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider">

<EncryptedData Type="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#Element"

xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#">

<EncryptionMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#tripledes-cbc" />

<KeyInfo xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">

<EncryptedKey xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#">

<EncryptionMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#rsa-1_5" />

<KeyInfo xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">

<KeyName>Rsa Key</KeyName>

</KeyInfo>

<CipherData>

<CipherValue>RTRWE..=</CipherValue>

</CipherData>

</EncryptedKey>

</KeyInfo>

<CipherData>

<CipherValue>FSM</CipherValue>

</CipherData>

</EncryptedData>

</connectionStrings>

That works for all connection strings in the ConnectionStrings.config file, unlike the analytics connectionstring for example, the standard WFFM connectionstring is stored in the /app_config/include/Sitecore.Forms.Config in following section.

<formsDataProvider type="Sitecore.Forms.Data.DataProviders.WFMDataProvider,Sitecore.Forms.Core">

but it turns out it is fairly simple to encrypt the connection string along with the others just move the connection string to standard ConnectionStrings.config file and call it wfm as shown below

<add name="wfm" connectionString="user …. />

now you can run the .bat file again and the wfm connectionstring is encrypted as well.

Remember that the encrypted connectionstring can only be decrypted on the machine that ran the .bat file.

To decrypt you can run the command

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -pdf “connectionStrings”