Best way to store encryption keys in .NET C#

Question

In our application we have a lot of sensitive configuration settings, which we are storing in a xml file which is again encrypted.

This secure file has to be decrypt

Answer 1

You should use the Machine Keystore, it's a secure storage especially for this purpose. For example:

CspParameters cspParams = new CspParameters(PROV_RSA_FULL, null, KEYNAME);

cspParams.Flags = CspProviderFlags.UseMachineKeyStore;

RSACryptoServiceProvider rsa = new RSACryptoServiceProvider(cspParams);

Where KEYNAME is a custom string that can be used to retrieve the key later on.

For more examples, see this question: How to store a public key in a machine-level RSA key container