Similar but not the same:

• How to securely store database connection details
• Securely connecting to database within a application

Hi all, I have a C# WinForms application connecting to a database server. The database connection string, including a generic user/pass, is placed in a NHibernate configuration file, which lies in the same directory as the exe file.

Now I have this issue: The user that runs the application should not get to know the username/password of the general database user because I don't want him to rummage around in the database directly.

Alternatively I could hardcode the connection string, which is bad because the administrator must be able to change it if the database is moved or if he wants to switch between dev/test/prod environments.

So long I've found three possibilities:

1. The first referenced question was generally answered by making the file only readable for the user that runs the application.

   But that's not not enough in my case (the user running the application is a person. The database user/pass are general and shouldn't even be accessible by the person.)

2. The first answer additionally proposed to encrypt the connection data before writing it to the file.

   With this approach, the administrator is not able anymore to configure the connection string because he cannot encrypt it by hand.

3. The second referenced question provides an approach for this very scenario but it seems very complicated.

My questions to you:

1. This is a very general issue, so isn't there any general "how-to-do-it" way, somehow a "design pattern"?

2. Is there some support in .NET's config infrastructure?

3. (optional, maybe out of scope) Can I combine that easily with the NHibernate configuration mechanism?