ASP.NET 4 Unleashed

Encrypting Sections with the aspnet_regiis Tool

The easiest way to encrypt a section in the web configuration file is to use the aspnet_regiis command-line tool located at the following path:

\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\[version]\aspnet_regiis.exe

If you want to encrypt a particular section of a configuration file, you can use the -pef option when executing the aspnet_regiis tool. For example, the following command encrypts the connectionStrings section of a configuration file located in a folder named MyWebApp:

aspnet_regiis -pef connectionStrings c:\Websites\MyWebApp

If you prefer, rather than specify the location of a web application by its file system path, you can use its virtual path. The following command encrypts the connectionStrings ...