Geeky Bob

I ran into an interesting predicament the other day, and I thought that both the situation and my solution were worth sharing. Here's the scenario: I host websites for several family members and friends, and one of my family member's uses BlogEngine.NET for her blog. (As you may have seen in my previous blogs, I'm a big fan of BlogEngine.NET.) In any event, she forgot her password, so I logged into the admin section of her website, only to discover that there was no way for me to reset her password – I could only reset my password. Since it's my webserver, I have access to the physical files, so I decided to write a simple utility that can create the requisite SHA256/BASE64 password hashes that BlogEngine.NET uses, and then I can manually update the Users.xml file with new password hashes as I create them.

With that in mind, here is the code for the command-line utility:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace BlogEnginePasswordHash
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      // Verify that a single argument was passed to the application...
      if (args.Length != 1)
      {
        // ...if not, reply with generic help message.
        Console.WriteLine("\nUSAGE: BlogEnginePasswordHash <password>\n");
      }
      // ...otherwise...
      else
      {
        // Retrieve a sequence of bytes for the password argument.
        var passwordBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(args[0]);
        // Retrieve a SHA256 object.
        using (HashAlgorithm sha256 = new SHA256Managed())
        {
          // Hash the password.
          sha256.TransformFinalBlock(passwordBytes, 0, passwordBytes.Length);
          // Convert the hashed password to a Base64 string.
          string passwordHash = Convert.ToBase64String(sha256.Hash);
          // Display the password and it's hash.
          Console.WriteLine("\nPassword: {0}\nHash: {1}\n", args[0], passwordHash);
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

That code snippet should be pretty self-explanatory; the application takes a single argument, which is the password to hash. Once you enter a password and hit enter, the password and it's respective hash will be displayed.

Here are a few examples:

C:\>BlogEnginePasswordHash.exe "This is my password"

Password: This is my password
Hash: 6tV+IGzvN4gaQ0vmCWNHSQ0UQ0WgW4+ThJuhpXR6Z3c=

C:\>BlogEnginePasswordHash.exe Password1

Password: Password1
Hash: GVE/3J2k+3KkoF62aRdUjTyQ/5TVQZ4fI2PuqJ3+4d0=

C:\>BlogEnginePasswordHash.exe Password2

Password: Password2
Hash: G+AiJ1Cq84iauVtdWTuhLk/xBGR0cC1rR3n0tScwWyM=

C:\>

Once you have created password hashes, you can paste those into the Users.xml file for your website:

<Users>
  <User>
    <UserName>Alice</UserName>
    <Password>GVE/3J2k+3KkoF62aRdUjTyQ/5TVQZ4fI2PuqJ3+4d0=</Password>
    <Email>alice@fabrikam.com</Email>
    <LastLoginTime>2015-01-31 01:52:00</LastLoginTime>
  </User>
  <User>
    <UserName>Bob</UserName>
    <Password>G+AiJ1Cq84iauVtdWTuhLk/xBGR0cC1rR3n0tScwWyM=</Password>
    <Email>bob@fabrikam.com</Email>
    <LastLoginTime>2015-01-31 01:53:00</LastLoginTime>
  </User>
</Users>

That's all there is to do. Pretty simple stuff.

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

I love BlogEngine.NET, and I love my Windows Phone 7 mobile phone, so it goes without saying that I would want the two technologies to work together. I'm currently using BlogEngine.NET 1.6.1, but Windows Phone 7 is not supported by default. That being said, it's really easy to add support for Windows Phone 7 by modifying your BlogEngine.NET settings. To do so, open your Web.config file and locate the following section:

<appSettings>
  <add key="BlogEngine.FileExtension"
    value=".aspx" />
  <!-- You can e.g. use "~/blog/" if BlogEngine.NET is not located in the root of the application -->
  <add key="BlogEngine.VirtualPath"
    value="~/" />
  <!-- The regex used to identify mobile devices so a different theme can be shown -->
  <add key="BlogEngine.MobileDevices"
    value="(nokia|sonyericsson|blackberry|samsung|sec\-|windows ce|motorola|mot\-|up.b|midp\-)" />
  <!-- The name of the role with administrator permissions -->
  <add key="BlogEngine.AdminRole"
    value="Administrators" />
  <!--This value is to provide an alterantive location for storing data.-->
  <add key="StorageLocation"
    value="~/App_Data/" />
  <!--A comma separated list of script names to hard minify. It's case-sensitive. -->
  <add key="BlogEngine.HardMinify"
    value="blog.js,widget.js,WebResource.axd" />
</appSettings>

The line that you need to modify is the BlogEngine.MobileDevices line, and all that you need to do is add iemobile to the list. When you finish, it should look like the following:

<add key="BlogEngine.MobileDevices"
  value="(iemobile|nokia|sonyericsson|blackberry|samsung|sec\-|windows ce|motorola|mot\-|up.b|midp\-)" />

You could also add support for Apple products by using the following syntax:

<add key="BlogEngine.MobileDevices"
  value="(iemobile|iphone|ipod|nokia|sonyericsson|blackberry|samsung|sec\-|windows ce|motorola|mot\-|up.b|midp\-)" />

That's all there is to it. ;-]

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/