Failed to decrypt using provider 'RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider'?

Mogli picture Mogli · Apr 20, 2013 · Viewed 41.3k times · Source

In my windows application i am trying to encrypt connection string section of app.config file, connection string part of my app.config file is

<connectionStrings>
<add name="SQLiteDB" connectionString="Data Source=|DataDirectory|database.s3db;    
Version=3;password=mypassword;" providerName="System.Data.Sqlite"/>
</connectionStrings>

and in .cs file i am encrypting it like

Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(Application.ExecutablePath);
ConfigurationSection section = config.GetSection("connectionStrings") as ConnectionStringsSection; // could be any section

if (!section.IsReadOnly())
{
 section.SectionInformation.ProtectSection("RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider");
 section.SectionInformation.ForceSave = true;
 config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Full);
}

after running this code i get encrypted connection string in a different app.config, this app.config resides in bin\debug folder and the name of this .config file is nameofapplication.exe.config.

The problem is when i made setup of this application and run on other machine if gives error that:

System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: Failed to decrypt using provider 'RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider'. Error message from the provider: The RSA key container could not be opened.

I am doing it first time so don't know how to solve this, stucked badly in it.

Answer

Kiquenet picture Kiquenet · Mar 17, 2014

Using this command aspnet_regiis -pa

Open cmd Console -execute as Administrator-

C:\Windows\system32>aspnet_regiis -pa "NetFrameworkConfigurationKey" "myDomain\myUser"
Microsoft (R) ASP.NET RegIIS versión 4.0.30319.33440
Utilidad de administración que instala y desinstala ASP.NET en el equipo local.
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. Todos los derechos reservados.
Agregando ACL para el acceso al contenedor de claves RSA...
Con éxito

More references:

Ɖiamond ǤeezeƦ answer

The RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider sometimes fails when encrypting an application configuration file

ASP.NET Encryption - aspnet_regiis - Farm

Encrypting and Decrypting Web.config Sections in .NET 4.0