# Cookie value encryption

**URL:** <https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cookie-value-encryption/16658>\
**Category:** rubyonrails-talk\
**Created:** [August 6, 2007, 1:37pm UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cookie-value-encryption/16658 "2007-08-06T13:37:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![homerlex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/bcef8e/32.png) [@homerlex](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/u/homerlex)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2007, 1:37pm UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cookie-value-encryption/16658/1 "2007-08-06T13:37:58Z")

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Is there anything built into either Ruby or Rails that can help encrypt and decrypt values placed in a cookie?

I realize that I could store sensitive data in the server side session instead I would like to know if cookie encryption is easily doable (exploring options).

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**Author:** ![Rick\_Olson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/898d66/32.png) [@Rick\_Olson](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/u/Rick_Olson)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2007, 1:41pm UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cookie-value-encryption/16658/2 "2007-08-06T13:41:18Z")

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OpenSSL, which is poorly documented. Luckily there's EZCrypto to the rescue (though I've never used it): [http://ezcrypto.rubyforge.org/](http://ezcrypto.rubyforge.org/)

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**Author:** ![Pratik1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6bbea6/32.png) [@Pratik1](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/u/Pratik1)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2007, 3:58pm UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cookie-value-encryption/16658/3 "2007-08-06T15:58:07Z")

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Or may be use cookie based session store, which encrypts the data.

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**Author:** ![homerlex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/bcef8e/32.png) [@homerlex](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/u/homerlex)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 11:05am UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cookie-value-encryption/16658/4 "2007-08-07T11:05:57Z")

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Where can I find some docs on how to use the Cookie Based Session Store? I'm using Rails 1.2.3 The following page makes no mention of it: [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoChangeSessionStore](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoChangeSessionStore)

Regards

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**Author:** ![Pratik1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6bbea6/32.png) [@Pratik1](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/u/Pratik1)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 11:41am UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/cookie-value-encryption/16658/5 "2007-08-07T11:41:13Z")

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Oops. Cookie based session store is only in edge rails.