Password Security : Encrypt and decrypt a string using Triple Des

In cryptography, Triple DES is the common name for the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (TDEA or Triple DEA) block cipher, which applies theData Encryption Standard (DES) cipher algorithm three times to each data block.

This code snippet is used for encrypting and decrypting a string using Triple Des and hashing.

 // TO ENCRYPT A STRING                                       public static string Encrypt(string toEncrypt, bool useHashing)
    {
        try
        {
            byte[] keyArray;
            byte[] toEncryptArray = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(toEncrypt);

            string key = "Someth1ngSpeci@l";

            if (useHashing)
            {
                MD5CryptoServiceProvider hashmd5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
                keyArray = hashmd5.ComputeHash(UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key));
                hashmd5.Clear();
            }
            else
                keyArray = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key);

            TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider tdes = new TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider();

            tdes.Key = keyArray;
            tdes.Mode = CipherMode.ECB;
            tdes.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;

            ICryptoTransform cTransform = tdes.CreateEncryptor();

            byte[] resultArray = cTransform.TransformFinalBlock(toEncryptArray, 0, toEncryptArray.Length);

            tdes.Clear();
            return Convert.ToBase64String(resultArray, 0, resultArray.Length);
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            return null;
        }
    }

// TO DECRYPT A STRING                                     public static string Decrypt(string cipherString, bool useHashing)
    {
        try
        {
            byte[] keyArray;
            byte[] toEncryptArray = Convert.FromBase64String(cipherString);

          
            string key = "Someth1ngSpeci@l"

            if (useHashing)
            {
                MD5CryptoServiceProvider hashmd5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
                keyArray = hashmd5.ComputeHash(UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key));
                hashmd5.Clear();
            }
            else
                keyArray = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key);

            TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider tdes = new TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider();

            tdes.Key = keyArray;
            tdes.Mode = CipherMode.ECB;
            tdes.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;

            ICryptoTransform cTransform = tdes.CreateDecryptor();
            byte[] resultArray = cTransform.TransformFinalBlock(toEncryptArray, 0, toEncryptArray.Length);

            tdes.Clear();
            return UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(resultArray);
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            return null;
            
        }


    }