MySQL with C# Credential Security

I'm making a distributable DLL plugin for a program I currently use that hosts an API to expand it's functionality. I want to use MySQL in this plugin but I don't want some 10 year old decompiling my plugin and getting my source code.

How can I make sure that the credentials I use for the application will not be compromised? The username and password will only be good for the certain tasks of the app but I still don't want it seen.

Encrypt it.

Just the credentials or the entire code? And how?

bump

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fearsoldier

... but I don't want some 10 year old decompiling my plugin and getting my source code.

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use an obfuscator. but that has nothing to do with securing your db credentials.

here are my suggestions:

1. Encrypt / encode your credentials (creating a byte array containing the ascii character values of the username/password and use Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes) to retrieve the name/pw, is the simplest way, but there are a bit more secure approaches too)
2. Use a web service instead of a local database (store all data remotely)
3. If your addin system provides you the facilities to make addin configurations, then provide each user a place to provide a username / password, and create a user and grant access based on those credentials rather than hard coding it.
4. Or, just don't worry about it...