Home/ Questions/Q 3806016
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-19T14:46:09+00:00

I am building an application that interacts with a web service. In order to

  • 0

I am building an application that interacts with a web service. In order to use that web service I have to login using my actual username and password – there is no other way to use the service.

I do not want to hard code in my details, like so:

String username = "MyUsername";
String password = "MyPassword";

I have thought about encrypting the details and storing them in a file, but, even so, anyone who has some programming experience can easily recover the information by looking at my source code:

File f = load("mydetails.txt");
String[] = recoverDetails(f); //or something like that

What is the safest way for me to store this information?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you really want them to be safe, you’re going to have to lock them into a cryptographically secure “vault” file. Somebody — you or somebody trusted, however that’s appropriate here — would provide a key to unlock the vault (basically another password), and then your software would be able to access the information stored in it.

    If there is no human with a secret involved in starting the application, then there’s really not going to be any way to totally hide the information. This is just a simple fact of reality, one that many people (like the DVD consortium) struggle to deny at their own peril.

    • 0