Generating Forms Authentication Compatible Passwords (SHA1)

Why would we want to create an SHA1 Password Hash?
The answer to this is easy. It is dangerous to store passwords anywhere in plain text!! SHA1 gives a quick and easy way to encode a password into a non-human readable form. This means it is safer to store in a database, and should the database be viewed by anyone who shouldn't know the passwords, it will be much more difficult for them to work out what a user's password is.

When creating a Web Application we can use the HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile object in the FormsAuthentication namespace to generate our SHA1 password hash.

The following section of code shows an example of this:

Dim encpass As String = _
FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile(tbxPassword.Text, _
"sha1")
tbxResult.Text = encpass.ToString()

The code takes the text from the "thePassword" textbox control and hashes the contents with the SHA1 algorithm. The result is then in the "theResult" textbox control.

This hashed password can then be placed in your web.config file or in a database and used in your web application for Forms Authentication. In a future tutorial we will show how to go on and use this in an application.


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