(CE 1.8) - UPS authentication strange Char Encoding

Question

After upgrading to Magento 1.8 UPS stop working.

I have checked the UPS log and I can see that XML is wrong:

  <AccessLicenseNumber>øòEñ?ì]a9XXXXX</AccessLicenseNumber>
  <UserId>És.XXXXXX</UserId>

What could be the cause ? it looks it using a wrong Encoding Char

Answer 1

The reason this would have happened is the encryption key in the app/etc/local.xml file changed without the stored values in the database being decrypted with the old key, encrypted with the new key and then re-stored in the database. Decrypting data with a key different than the one which it was originally encrypted with will result in garbled data such as what you saw.

My best guess is that the method of the upgrade somehow wiped out the encryption key or local.xml file, invalidating all stored data which was encrypted with the original key.

Answer 2

It looks that saving the data in the backend does the trick.

However I'm not really sure if the issue was caused by MySql or by the Magento upgrade ( maybe because these data are encrypted it is required to save them again ... )