Classic ASP vs. ASP.NET encryption options
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by harrije
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Published on 2010-06-18T04:44:02Z
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2010/06/18
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I'm working on a web site where the new pages are ASP.NET and the legacy pages are Classic ASP. Being new to development in the Windows env, I've been studying the latest technology, i.e. .NET and I become like a deer in headlights when ever legacy issues come up regarding COM objects.
Security on the website is an abomination, but I've easily encrypted the connectionStrings in the web.config file per http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/021506-1.aspx based on DPAPI machine mode. I understand this approach is not the most secure, but it's better than nothing which is what it was for the ASP.NET pages. Now, I question how to do similar encryption for the connection strings used by the Classic ASP pages.
A complicating factor is that the web sited is hosted where I do not have admin permissions or even command line access, just FTP. Moreover I want to avoid managing the key.
My research has found:
DPAPI with COM interop. Seems like this should already be available, but the only thing I could find discussing this is CyptoUtility (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163884.aspx) which is not installed on the hosting server.
There are plenty of other third party COM objects, e.g. Crypto from Dalun Software http://www.dalun.com, but these aren't on the hosted server either, and they look to me to require you to do some kind of key management.
There is CAPICOM on the hosted server, but M$ has deprecated it and many report it is not the easiest to use. It is not clear to me whether I can avoid key management with CAPICOM similar to using DPAPI for ASP.NET. If anyone happens to know, please clue me in.
I could write an web service in ASP.NET and have the classic ASP pages use it to get the decrypted connection strings and then store those in an application variable. I would not need to use SSL since I could use localhost and nothing would be sent over the internet. In the simpliest form I could implement what someone termed a poor man's version based on a simple XML stream, however, I really was looking to avoid any development since I find it hard to believe there is not a simple solution for Classic ASP like there is for ASP.NET.
Maybe I'm missing some options... Recommendations are requested...
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