title: How? Encrypt and Decrypt user membership passwords in ASP.NET
body: <p>We are creating a new site using ASP.NET membership provider for user registration and log in. Our old system encrypted user passwords so that we could recover them if we needed to.</p>
  
  <p>I am having a great deal of trouble figuring out if it is possible to use ASP.NET membership functions to simply encrypt the password when the user registers and then unencrypt it so I can see it.</p>
  
  <p>Documentation for this is neigh non-existant.</p>
  
  <p>I know how to configure Web.config to have it store passwords as encrypted ala
  passwordFormat="Encrypted" in the provider and assigning a validationKey in the machineKey, however it seems like the password still gets hashed (though perhaps it is just well encrypted). Either way I cannot decifer how the password can be recovered (by us) if neccessary.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>