LKBEN10691: Howto encrypt vbs or js scripts so you cannot read them anymore

Symptom

You need to encrypt a script because you used a password in cleartext in it

Cause

You do not want your script to be readable by users

Solution

You can use the free microsoft script encoder to encrypt your scripts. You need to download the tool and install it first.

After installation you can encode a script with the following syntax:

SRCENC [switches] inputfile outputfile

You can encode 4 kinds of files:
1. ASP (asp, asa and cdx)
2. HTML (htm and html)
3. Plain text (js and vbs respectively)
4. scriptlets (sct and wsh)

Example:

You can copy and paste the following and save it as hello.vbs

'--------------------------
'For the Lubby project
'by Wim Peeters
'
'**Start Encode**
WScript.Echo "Hello, world"
'--------------------------


If you run this script it will just say "Hello, world".

Now we will encrypt it with:

E:\>"C:\Program Files\Windows Script Encoder\screnc.exe" "e:\hello-world.vbs" c:\temp\hello.vbe

The encrypted script c:\temp\hello.vbe looks like:

'--------------------------
'For the Lubby project
'by Wim Peeters
'
'**Start Encode**#@~^PgAAAA==@#@&j1DbwYc214W,Ju+^VGS,hWMsNr@#@&ERRO O ORORR ORO RO ORR OORLA4AAA==^#~@

The encoded script can be used just as the other one.

E:\>c:\temp\hello.vbe
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host, Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Hello, world 

Disclaimer:

About the Author

Author: Wim Peeters - Keskon GmbH & Co. KG

Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience, including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform.