Question

I have created a few little programs that export data to a text file using StreamWriter and then I read them back in using StreamReader. This works great and does what I need it to do but I was wondering if there was a way that I could save this information without the user being able to access or modify it either intentionally or unintentionally. An example of something I would have in a text file would be if a checkbox was ticked, when you tick it it outputs “Ticked” to a text file, when the program is re – opened I know what state the form was in when it was closed. I obviously don’t want to keep using text files. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can easily store this information without the user being able to modify it? Thank you very much.

Answer 1

The simplest way is to Base-64 encode/decode this text. This is not secure, but will prevent a casual user from modifying the data.

static public string EncodeTo64(string toEncode)
{
  byte[] toEncodeAsBytes
        = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(toEncode);
  string returnValue
        = System.Convert.ToBase64String(toEncodeAsBytes);
  return returnValue;
}

static public string DecodeFrom64(string encodedData)
{
  byte[] encodedDataAsBytes
      = System.Convert.FromBase64String(encodedData);
  string returnValue =
     System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(encodedDataAsBytes);
  return returnValue;
}

EDIT: Real encryption

#region Encryption

        string passPhrase = "Pasword";        // can be any string
        string saltValue = "sALtValue";        // can be any string
        string hashAlgorithm = "SHA1";             // can be "MD5"
        int passwordIterations = 7;                  // can be any number
        string initVector = "~1B2c3D4e5F6g7H8"; // must be 16 bytes
        int keySize = 256;                // can be 192 or 128

        private string Encrypt(string data)
        {
            byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(this.initVector);
            byte[] rgbSalt = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(this.saltValue);
            byte[] buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
            byte[] rgbKey = new PasswordDeriveBytes(this.passPhrase, rgbSalt, this.hashAlgorithm, this.passwordIterations).GetBytes(this.keySize / 8);
            RijndaelManaged managed = new RijndaelManaged();
            managed.Mode = CipherMode.CBC;
            ICryptoTransform transform = managed.CreateEncryptor(rgbKey, bytes);
            MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
            CryptoStream stream2 = new CryptoStream(stream, transform, CryptoStreamMode.Write);
            stream2.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
            stream2.FlushFinalBlock();
            byte[] inArray = stream.ToArray();
            stream.Close();
            stream2.Close();
            return Convert.ToBase64String(inArray);
        }

        private string Decrypt(string data)
        {
            byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(this.initVector);
            byte[] rgbSalt = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(this.saltValue);
            byte[] buffer = Convert.FromBase64String(data);
            byte[] rgbKey = new PasswordDeriveBytes(this.passPhrase, rgbSalt, this.hashAlgorithm, this.passwordIterations).GetBytes(this.keySize / 8);
            RijndaelManaged managed = new RijndaelManaged();
            managed.Mode = CipherMode.CBC;
            ICryptoTransform transform = managed.CreateDecryptor(rgbKey, bytes);
            MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(buffer);
            CryptoStream stream2 = new CryptoStream(stream, transform, CryptoStreamMode.Read);
            byte[] buffer5 = new byte[buffer.Length];
            int count = stream2.Read(buffer5, 0, buffer5.Length);
            stream.Close();
            stream2.Close();
            return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer5, 0, count);
        }
        #endregion