What's the best way to encrypt short strings in .NET?

Question

My boss wants me to encrypt some information used during data transfer. The individual strings to be encrypted are between eight and twenty characters long. A single passwor

Answer 1

Here is encrypt & decrypt function with des3 encryption

''' 

''' Encrypts a memory string (i.e. variable).
''' 
''' String to be encrypted.
''' Encryption key.
''' Encryption initialization vector.
''' Encrypted string.
Public Shared Function Encrypt(ByVal data As String, ByVal key As String, ByVal iv As String) As String
    Dim bdata As Byte() = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(data)
    Dim bkey As Byte() = HexToBytes(key)
    Dim biv As Byte() = HexToBytes(iv)

    Dim stream As MemoryStream = New MemoryStream
    Dim encStream As CryptoStream = New CryptoStream(stream, des3.CreateEncryptor(bkey, biv), CryptoStreamMode.Write)

    encStream.Write(bdata, 0, bdata.Length)
    encStream.FlushFinalBlock()
    encStream.Close()

    Return BytesToHex(stream.ToArray())
End Function

''' 

''' Decrypts a memory string (i.e. variable).
''' 
''' String to be decrypted.
''' Original encryption key.
''' Original initialization vector.
''' Decrypted string.
Public Shared Function Decrypt(ByVal data As String, ByVal key As String, ByVal iv As String) As String
    Dim bdata As Byte() = HexToBytes(data)
    Dim bkey As Byte() = HexToBytes(key)
    Dim biv As Byte() = HexToBytes(iv)

    Dim stream As MemoryStream = New MemoryStream
    Dim encStream As CryptoStream = New CryptoStream(stream, des3.CreateDecryptor(bkey, biv), CryptoStreamMode.Write)

    encStream.Write(bdata, 0, bdata.Length)
    encStream.FlushFinalBlock()
    encStream.Close()

    Return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(stream.ToArray())
End Function