Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Password encryption

Many a times we come across a situation where we may need to encrypt the password which we use in the SAS programs (Example: Using a password to access a database like db2). This can be acheived by the pwencode procedure. See the example below:

filename fileref "C:\MyFolder\Pwd.txt";
proc pwencode in="My Passwd" out=fileref;
run;

The contents of the Pwd.tx is as follows:
{sas001}TXkgUGFzc3dk

Here the {sas001} denotes the method of encryption. More information on the encryption methods available/used in SAS can be found at:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/secref/62092/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a002595992.htm

Now the encoded password can be used everywhere by reading the contents of the file Pwd.txt.

5 comments:

  1. This is the most common method that most of the people uses to secure information. I am looking for some advanced methods which are used to secure information online.
    eSignature

    ReplyDelete
  2. You can use SAS PWDECODE to decrypt your password, e.g. https://decrypt-password.appspot.com/sas-pwdecode/?pwencode={sas001}TXkgUGFzc3dk

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great article, thanks. This is a tad outdated, now, though, since blowfish has a huge security hole. The recommendation is to use blowfish2 as long as you're using vim 7.4.399 or later.


    encryption

    ReplyDelete