Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

This function decrypts text that was encrypted using the triple Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm with a 128-bit key length, reversing the DES_ENCRYPT() function. It returns NULL if an error occurs. The function will work only if MySQL has been configured for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support. It is available as of version 4.0.1 of MySQL. Here is an example:

SELECT DES_DECRYPT(credit_card_nbr, 0)
FROM orders
WHERE order_nbr = '8347';

In this example, the value for the credit_card_nbr column is decrypted using the first key string in the key file. See the description of DES_ENCRYPT() next for more information on key files.