What is the easiest way to encrypt a password when I save it to the registry?

Question

Currently I\'m writing it in clear text oops!, it\'s an in house program so it\'s not that bad but I\'d like to do it right. How should I go about encrypting this w

Answer 1

If you want to be able to decrypt the password, I think the easiest way would be to use DPAPI (user store mode) to encrypt/decrypt. This way you don't have to fiddle with encryption keys, store them somewhere or hard-code them in your code - in both cases somebody can discover them by looking into registry, user settings or using Reflector.

Otherwise use hashes SHA1 or MD5 like others have said here.