What an encrypted file looks like

A standard web.config file will be in clear text, and two important parts of this file with sensitive information are the "connectionStrings" section, and the "appSettings" section.

The connectionStrings section holds the credentials that your Passwordstate website uses to connect to your database. For example, it will contain the server name, the database name and database instance if it is applicable, and the SQL username and password.

The appSettings section contains the two split Secret Encryption Keys.

A clear text web.config file looks like this:

An encrypted web.config file looks like this:

As you can see, the encrypted web.config file is not readable, and references “RSAProtected”