Encrypting/Decrypting from a text file

Question

I have a program and I want to make it so you need a specific key to use it. I want to store keys in a text file and also use encrypt strings from my program to a text file.

I'm using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and programming in Visual Basic

Answer 1

take a look at this question: Symmetric key storage

it's a bit more complicated than it appears, simply encrypting a text file and storing the key inside your program just gives you "feeling of security", not the real, hard, good security.

Also, do some more research here in StackOverflow and in https://crypto.stackexchange.com/ and in https://security.stackexchange.com/ , you'll learn a lot about security and crypto things. You'll need.