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My company is using software that stores an encrypted database password in a publicly accessible file. The encrypted version looks like this:

Cp#######d#######u#######w#######b#######6#######g######V#######

Has anyone ever seen this type of encryption? I know it is encrypted and not hashed because the app can spit it back out into plain text.

Any ideas?

This is mainly a security concern because our users have access to the encrypted text and I am afraid they could find the algorithm and have higher privileges within the software.

Thank you.

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Are those hash marks really part of the data? o_O Anyway, it's almost certainly some home-brew scheme, and, if that's really what the data looks like, probably not very hard to break at all. Can you give us a few (made up) passwords and the corresponding "encrypted" data? – Ilmari Karonen Feb 3 '12 at 0:54
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Questions of the form "what encryption scheme is this" are usually considered as not constructive ... for modern encryption schemes, the output is (or should be) more or less indistinguishable from random data (which gives you no chance of identifying it). Thus this likely is some homebrewed scheme, and identifying such one is even less constructive. As such, I'm closing the question. – Paŭlo Ebermann♦ Feb 3 '12 at 12:22
@IlmariKaronen Thanks for the push to try and crack it. I figured out the scheme in a mater of minutes. Very bad indeed. – ach Feb 3 '12 at 17:58
@PaŭloEbermann Sorry for the poor question, should have worded it better. I see from the side that there is already a similar question with answers. I voted to delete this one. – ach Feb 3 '12 at 17:59

closed as not constructive by poncho, mikeazo♦, Paŭlo Ebermann♦ Feb 3 '12 at 12:15

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