Leveraging ASP.NET machineKey For Encrypting My Own Data

With .NET Framwork 4.5 you should use the new API:

public class StringProtector
{

    private const string Purpose = "Authentication Token";

    public string Protect(string unprotectedText)
    {
        var unprotectedBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(unprotectedText);
        var protectedBytes = MachineKey.Protect(unprotectedBytes, Purpose);
        var protectedText = Convert.ToBase64String(protectedBytes);
        return protectedText;
    }

    public string Unprotect(string protectedText)
    {
        var protectedBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(protectedText);
        var unprotectedBytes = MachineKey.Unprotect(protectedBytes, Purpose);
        var unprotectedText = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(unprotectedBytes);
        return unprotectedText;
    }

}

Ideally the “Purpose” should be a known one time valid value to prevent forging.