SQLite with encryption/password protection

Question

SQLite has hooks built-in for encryption which are not used in the normal distribution, but here are a few implementations I know of:

• SEE - The official implementation.
• wxSQLite - A wxWidgets style C++ wrapper that also implements SQLite's encryption.
• SQLCipher - Uses openSSL's libcrypto to implement.
• SQLiteCrypt - Custom implementation, modified API.
• botansqlite3 - botansqlite3 is an encryption codec for SQLite3 that can use any algorithms in Botan for encryption.
• sqleet - another encryption implementation, using ChaCha20/Poly1305 primitives. Note that wxSQLite mentioned above can use this as a crypto provider.

The SEE and SQLiteCrypt require the purchase of a license.

Disclosure: I created botansqlite3.

You can password protect SQLite3 DB. For the first time before doing any operations, set password as follows.

SQLiteConnection conn = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=MyDatabase.sqlite;Version=3;");
conn.SetPassword("password");
conn.open();

then next time you can access it like

conn = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=MyDatabase.sqlite;Version=3;Password=password;");
conn.Open();

This wont allow any GUI editor to view Your data. Later if you wish to change the password, use conn.ChangePassword("new_password"); To reset or remove password, use conn.ChangePassword(String.Empty);

The .net library System.Data.SQLite also provides for encryption.

You can get sqlite3.dll file with encryption support from http://system.data.sqlite.org/.

1 - Go to http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/downloads.wiki and download one of the packages. .NET version is irrelevant here.

2 - Extract SQLite.Interop.dll from package and rename it to sqlite3.dll. This DLL supports encryption via plaintext passwords or encryption keys.

The mentioned file is native and does NOT require .NET framework. It might need Visual C++ Runtime depending on the package you have downloaded.

UPDATE

This is the package that I've downloaded for 32-bit development: http://system.data.sqlite.org/blobs/1.0.94.0/sqlite-netFx40-static-binary-Win32-2010-1.0.94.0.zip

Keep in mind, the following is not intended to be a substitute for a proper security solution.

After playing around with this for four days, I've put together a solution using only the open source System.Data.SQLite package from NuGet. I don't know how much protection this provides. I'm only using it for my own course of study. This will create the DB, encrypt it, create a table, and add data.

using System.Data.SQLite;

namespace EncryptDB
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string connectionString = @"C:\Programming\sqlite3\db.db";
            string passwordString = "password";
            byte[] passwordBytes = GetBytes(passwordString);
            SQLiteConnection.CreateFile(connectionString);
            SQLiteConnection conn = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=" + connectionString + ";Version=3;");
            conn.SetPassword(passwordBytes);
            conn.Open();
            SQLiteCommand sqlCmd = new SQLiteCommand("CREATE TABLE data(filename TEXT, filepath TEXT, filelength INTEGER, directory TEXT)", conn);
            sqlCmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
            sqlCmd = new SQLiteCommand("INSERT INTO data VALUES('name', 'path', 200, 'dir')", conn);
            sqlCmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
            conn.Close();
        }
        static byte[] GetBytes(string str)
        {
            byte[] bytes = new byte[str.Length * sizeof(char)];
            bytes = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(str);
            return bytes;
        }
    }
}

Optionally, you can remove conn.SetPassword(passwordBytes);, and replace it with conn.ChangePassword("password"); which needs to be placed after conn.Open(); instead of before. Then you won't need the GetBytes method.

To decrypt, it's just a matter of putting the password in your connection string before the call to open.

        string filename = @"C:\Programming\sqlite3\db.db";
        string passwordString = "password";
        SQLiteConnection conn = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=" + filename + ";Version=3;Password=" + passwordString + ";");
        conn.Open();