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how to convert a string in to a byte array

I've wrote a method to encrypt/decrypt a string. Encryption is happening successfully but I cannot manage to make the decryption work... This is the code I have written:
public String encrypt(String a, int x) {
String ret = "";
String text = a;
String key = "Bar12345Bar12345"; // 128 bit key
try {
// Create key and cipher
Key aesKey = new SecretKeySpec(key.getBytes(), "AES");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
if(x == 0) { //x==0 means I want to encrypt
// encrypt the text
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, aesKey);
byte[] encrypted = cipher.doFinal(text.getBytes());
ret =new String(encrypted);
}
else { //if not 0 I want to decrypt
// decrypt the text
byte[] encrypted = text.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, aesKey);
String decrypted = new String(cipher.doFinal(encrypted));
ret=decrypted;
}
} catch(Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return ret;
}
I think the problem arise when I'm trying to convert the string into byte array. The error I get is:
javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: Given final block not properly padded
So what is the problem ? If I am not converting the string into byte array in right way, how should I do it ?

Android encryption "pad block corrupted" exception

In this code, this line is causing an exception:
clearText = c.doFinal(Base64.decode(encryptedText, Base64.DEFAULT));
javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: pad block corrupted
I got the code from:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/attention-android-developers-keep-user-data-safe/
Any ideas?
private String decrypt (String encryptedText) {
byte[] clearText = null;
try {
SecretKeySpec ks = new SecretKeySpec(getKey(), "AES");
Cipher c = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
c.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, ks);
clearText = c.doFinal(Base64.decode(encryptedText, Base64.DEFAULT));
return new String(clearText, "UTF-8");
} catch (Exception e) {
return null;
}
}
Details: I am encrypting it on the android as well

owlstead's advice was helpful, but for this case when using the code in
Attention Android developers: Keep user data safe
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/attention-android-developers-keep-user-data-safe/
I made some changes to the code that might be helpful for other people in the future. I completely deleted the getkey method.
private static String seed;
/**
* Encrypts the text.
* #param clearText The text you want to encrypt
* #return Encrypted data if successful, or null if unsucessful
*/
protected String encrypt(String clearText) {
byte[] encryptedText = null;
try {
byte[] keyData = seed.getBytes();
SecretKey ks = new SecretKeySpec(keyData, "AES");
Cipher c = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
c.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, ks);
encryptedText = c.doFinal(clearText.getBytes("UTF-8"));
return Base64.encodeToString(encryptedText, Base64.DEFAULT);
} catch (Exception e) {
return null;
}
}
/**
* Decrypts the text
* #param encryptedText The text you want to encrypt
* #return Decrypted data if successful, or null if unsucessful
*/
protected String decrypt (String encryptedText) {
byte[] clearText = null;
try {
byte[] keyData = seed.getBytes();
SecretKey ks = new SecretKeySpec(keyData, "AES");
Cipher c = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
c.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, ks);
clearText = c.doFinal(Base64.decode(encryptedText, Base64.DEFAULT));
return new String(clearText, "UTF-8");
} catch (Exception e) {
return null;
}
}

Java + Android + Encryption + Exception means just one thing normally, somebody is using the SecureRandom class again as a key derivation function. This fails when the SecureRandom implementation of "SHA1PRNG" does not behave as the one in Sun's implementation in Java SE. Especially if the seed is added to the state of the random number generator instead of the seed being used as a starting point of the PRNG.
Basically, simply use SecretKey aesKey = new SecretKeySpec(byte[] keyData, "AES") instead, or - if you start off with a password - try and generate the key using PBKDF2.

For me, the problem is in getKey()
Make sure that two invocation of getKey() return the same value.
I used new SecureRandom(password.getBytes()) to generate key. It worked on Windows, but on Android, it returned different value for different call.

I Reffred From this : https://androidfreetutorial.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/android-encryptiondecryption-with-aes-algorithm/
Change to "AES" From "AES/ECB/PKCS7Padding";

Encryption - Decryption with AES/BlowFish/DESede and Enum

First of all I wanna say thank you...
I wrote a program which one is doing encryption and decryption with Enum.
Enum has AES,BlowFish,DESede. My program will support these 3 encryption algorithm.
Then I wanted to Generate a SecretKey with SecretKeyFactory.But I think,I made a mistake to generate a key. (Obviously I loose myself in code.I have no idea about what can I do...)
My Code is below. This program's purpose is;
Users will write encryption and decryption method parameters. (Text,Encryption Algorithm)
Algorithm type will choose in Enum type. (Enum has 3 algorithm format)
According to the entered Encryption Type,program will encrypt entered text.
I know my code is really terrible. It has lots of unnecessary declaration and logical mistakes.
Code is working fine sometimes,sometimes will crash.
EDIT = Question is my code doesnt work always. Sometimes gives error. Error is = javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: Given final block not properly padded
Thank you for answering.
import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.security.spec.KeySpec;
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.SecretKey;
import javax.crypto.SecretKeyFactory;
import javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
public class SymetricAlgorithms {
private static enum algorithms { //Enum declaration 3 encryption types here
AES, BlowFish, DESede;
}
private static String data = "HOWCANISOLVETHIS"; //this will be encrypt and decrypt
public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable {
SecretKey kgen = GenerateKey(); // Create a key.
String encrypText = encrypt(kgen, data, algorithms.AES); //encrypt method calling here.
String decrypText = dencypt(kgen, encrypText, algorithms.AES);//decrypt method calling here.
System.out.println("plaintext = " + data + " key = " + kgen
+ "\nEncryptedText = " + encrypText
+ "\nDecryptedText = " + decrypText);
}
public static String dencypt(SecretKey inKey, String text, algorithms eValue)throws Throwable {//decryption
try {
byte[] text2 = text.getBytes(); //convert from parameters TEXT to Bytes
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES"); //Cipher initialize and choose encryption method (AES)
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, inKey); //cipher process
byte plainTextByte[] = new byte[20]; //Creating byte array
plainTextByte =cipher.doFinal(text2);//using byte array to assign ciphers result
System.out.println(plainTextByte);
return new String(plainTextByte);
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Data Cant Decrypted !");
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
public static String encrypt(SecretKey inKey, String text, algorithms eValue)
throws Throwable {
try {
Cipher cipher = null; //cipher declaration
switch (eValue) {//Enum. 3 types here and control structure for Users choosing encryption type is acceptable
case AES:cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
break;
case BlowFish:Cipher cipher2 = Cipher.getInstance("BlowFish");
cipher = cipher2;
break;
case DESede:Cipher cipher3 = Cipher.getInstance("DESede");
cipher=cipher3;
break;
default:
System.out.println("Unexpectable value input.");
break;
}
System.out.println(inKey);
//Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, inKey);
byte[] ciphertext = cipher.doFinal(text.getBytes("UTF-8"));//cipher result is assign to byte array
System.out.println(ciphertext);
return new String(ciphertext);
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Unexpectable algorithm type !");
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
public static SecretKey GenerateKey() throws Throwable {//Generate a key for using crypt
//could sb explain these? =D I loose myself. I combined codes from finding internet...Failed...
try {
SecretKeyFactory factory = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
SecureRandom prng = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG");
byte bytes[] = new byte[20];
prng.nextBytes(bytes);
String passwordTemp = prng.toString();
String saltTemp = passwordTemp;
char[] password = passwordTemp.toCharArray();
byte[] salt = saltTemp.getBytes();
KeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(password, salt, 65536, 128);
SecretKey tmp = factory.generateSecret(spec);
SecretKey secret = new SecretKeySpec(tmp.getEncoded(), "AES");
return secret;
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Key cant be generated !");
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
}

The theme of the problem is misunderstanding of the relationship between Strings and bytes. At the end of the encrypt method, what do you think these two lines do:
byte[] ciphertext = cipher.doFinal(...
return new String(ciphertext);
The last line takes the encrypted bytes, which could be almost anything, and attempts to interpret those bytes as encoding some characters of a string. Using what encoding? String constructor with no character encoding argument uses system default encoding, which depends on JVM/OS/Locale. Lets say it is UTF-8. Are you guaranteed that there will actually be some character for the encrypted bytes? Answer: NO. Will you get the same bytes back, when you take the resulting string and call .getBytes("UTF-8"). Answer: No, there are mutliple byte sequences encoding the same characters, thus new String(bytes, "UTF-8").getBytes("UTF-8") is not guaranteed to return the bytes you started with.
In summary, don't attempt to interpret arbitrary bytes as a string. Make your encrypt method return byte[], and your decryp method take an array of bytes to decode-- then it will work.
It is not necessary to make your program work, but if you must represent the encrypted bytes as a string, consider base64 encoding, or hexadecimal encoding -- these encodings uniquely map every possible byte (or sequence of bytes) to a string.
UPDATE: here is a more concise generateKey() method. It allows you to pass the password in as an argument.
public static SecretKey generateKey(String password) {
try {
SecureRandom secureRandom = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG");
byte saltBytes[] = new byte[20];
secureRandom.nextBytes(saltBytes);
KeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(password.toCharArray(), saltBytes, 65536, 128);
SecretKeyFactory factory = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
SecretKey secretKey = factory.generateSecret(spec);
return new SecretKeySpec(secretKey.getEncoded(), "AES");
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new IllegalStateException("Key cant be generated !");
}
}

PHP Java AES CBC Encryption Different Results

PHP Function:
$privateKey = "1234567812345678";
$iv = "1234567812345678";
$data = "Test string";
$encrypted = mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128, $privateKey, $data, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, $iv);
echo(base64_encode($encrypted));
Result: iz1qFlQJfs6Ycp+gcc2z4w==
Java Function
public static String encrypt() throws Exception{
try{
String data = "Test string";
String key = "1234567812345678";
String iv = "1234567812345678";
javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec keyspec = new javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec(key.getBytes(), "AES");
javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec ivspec = new javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec(iv.getBytes());
javax.crypto.Cipher cipher = javax.crypto.Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/NoPadding");
cipher.init(javax.crypto.Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, keyspec, ivspec);
byte[] encrypted = cipher.doFinal(data.getBytes());
return new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(encrypted);
}catch(Exception e){
return null;
}
}
returns null.
Please note that we are not allowed to change the PHP code. Could somebody please help us get the same results in Java? Many thanks.

You'd have had a better idea of what was going on if you didn't simply swallow up possible Exceptions inside your encrypt() routine. If your function is returning null then clearly an exception happened and you need to know what it was.
In fact, the exception is:
javax.crypto.IllegalBlockSizeException: Input length not multiple of 16 bytes
at com.sun.crypto.provider.CipherCore.finalNoPadding(CipherCore.java:854)
at com.sun.crypto.provider.CipherCore.doFinal(CipherCore.java:828)
at com.sun.crypto.provider.CipherCore.doFinal(CipherCore.java:676)
at com.sun.crypto.provider.AESCipher.engineDoFinal(AESCipher.java:313)
at javax.crypto.Cipher.doFinal(Cipher.java:2087)
at Encryption.encrypt(Encryption.java:20)
at Encryption.main(Encryption.java:6)
And sure enough, your plaintext is only 11 Java characters long which, in your default encoding, will be 11 bytes.
You need to check what the PHP mcrypt_encrypt function actually does. Since it works, it is clearly using some padding scheme. You need to find out which one it is and use it in your Java code.
Ok -- I looked up the man page for mcrypt_encrypt. It says:
The data that will be encrypted with the given cipher and mode. If the size of the data is not n * blocksize, the data will be padded with \0.
So you need to replicate that in Java. Here's one way:
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
public class Encryption
{
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
System.out.println(encrypt());
}
public static String encrypt() throws Exception {
try {
String data = "Test string";
String key = "1234567812345678";
String iv = "1234567812345678";
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/NoPadding");
int blockSize = cipher.getBlockSize();
// We need to pad with zeros to a multiple of the cipher block size,
// so first figure out what the size of the plaintext needs to be.
byte[] dataBytes = data.getBytes();
int plaintextLength = dataBytes.length;
int remainder = plaintextLength % blockSize;
if (remainder != 0) {
plaintextLength += (blockSize - remainder);
}
// In java, primitive arrays of integer types have all elements
// initialized to zero, so no need to explicitly zero any part of
// the array.
byte[] plaintext = new byte[plaintextLength];
// Copy our actual data into the beginning of the array. The
// rest of the array is implicitly zero-filled, as desired.
System.arraycopy(dataBytes, 0, plaintext, 0, dataBytes.length);
SecretKeySpec keyspec = new SecretKeySpec(key.getBytes(), "AES");
IvParameterSpec ivspec = new IvParameterSpec(iv.getBytes());
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, keyspec, ivspec);
byte[] encrypted = cipher.doFinal(plaintext);
return new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(encrypted);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return null;
}
}
}
And when I run that I get:
iz1qFlQJfs6Ycp+gcc2z4w==
which is what your PHP program got.
Update (12 June 2016):
As of Java 8, JavaSE finally ships with a documented base64 codec. So instead of
return new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(encrypted);
you should do something like
return Base64.Encoder.encodeToString(encrypted);
Alternatively, use a 3rd-party library (such as commons-codec) for base64 encoding/decoding rather than using an undocumented internal method.

Encrypting AES key with RSA public key

I'm writing a small application for transferring files, more or less as a way to learn more of the programmatic encryption underpinnings. The idea is to generate an RSA keypair, exchange public keys, and send the AES iv and key over for further decryption. I want to encrypt the AES key with the receivers RSA public key, like so:
// encode the SecretKeySpec
private byte[] EncryptSecretKey ()
{
Cipher cipher = null;
byte[] key = null;
try
{
cipher = Cipher.getInstance("RSA/ECB/NOPADDING");
// contact.getPublicKey returns a public key of type Key
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, contact.getPublicKey() );
// skey is the SecretKey used to encrypt the AES data
key = cipher.doFinal(skey.getEncoded());
}
catch(Exception e )
{
System.out.println ( "exception encoding key: " + e.getMessage() );
e.printStackTrace();
}
return key;
}
I then write out the key value to the receiver, and decrypt it like so:
private SecretKey decryptAESKey(byte[] data )
{
SecretKey key = null;
PrivateKey privKey = null;
Cipher cipher = null;
System.out.println ( "Data as hex: " + utility.asHex(data) );
System.out.println ( "data length: " + data.length );
try
{
// assume this loads our private key
privKey = (PrivateKey)utility.loadLocalKey("private.key", false);
cipher = Cipher.getInstance("RSA/ECB/NOPADDING");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, privKey );
key = new SecretKeySpec(cipher.doFinal(data), "AES");
System.out.println ( "Key decrypted, length is " + key.getEncoded().length );
System.out.println ( "data: " + utility.asHex(key.getEncoded()));
}
catch(Exception e)
{
System.out.println ( "exception decrypting the aes key: " + e.getMessage() );
e.printStackTrace();
return null;
}
return key;
}
In console, on the other side, I get this as output:
read_bytes for key: 16
data length: 16
Data as hex: <hex string>
Key decrypted, length is 256
java.security.InvalidKeyException: Invalid AES key length: 256 bytes
Furthermore, if I create a byte array of size 16 and put the cipher.doFinal(data) output into it, the array is seemingly resized to 256 bytes (.length says so, at least). Why would this be, and further, what am I doing incorrectly?
edit
I solved this, and thought I'd post the issue in case someone runs into this. The problem, it turns out, was the RSA/ECB/NOPADDING. For some odd reason it was screwing up my creation of the SecretKey when I transferred it over to the client. It might have something to do with how I'm generating keypairs (i'm using getInstance("RSA") for that), but I'm not entirely sure.

As owlstead mentioned, you cannot just use "raw" RSA without padding for encryption/decryption. For one it is very insecure, and for another, the Java libraries do not even support it. Below is the working code for the encryption/decryption of the AES key using RSA keypairs.
private byte[] EncryptSecretKey ()
{
Cipher cipher = null;
byte[] key = null;
try
{
// initialize the cipher with the user's public key
cipher = Cipher.getInstance("RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, contact.getPublicKey() );
key = cipher.doFinal(skey.getEncoded());
}
catch(Exception e )
{
System.out.println ( "exception encoding key: " + e.getMessage() );
e.printStackTrace();
}
return key;
}
Decryption of the AES key looks like this:
private SecretKey decryptAESKey(byte[] data )
{
SecretKey key = null;
PrivateKey privKey = null;
Cipher cipher = null;
try
{
// this is OUR private key
privKey = (PrivateKey)utility.loadLocalKey(
ConfigFrame.privateKeyLocation, false);
// initialize the cipher...
cipher = Cipher.getInstance("RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, privKey );
// generate the aes key!
key = new SecretKeySpec ( cipher.doFinal(data), "AES" );
}
catch(Exception e)
{
System.out.println ( "exception decrypting the aes key: "
+ e.getMessage() );
return null;
}
return key;
}

You cannot just use "raw" RSA to encrypt data without any padding. You need some kind of padding scheme, if only for security reasons. Normally "RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding" is used. This can encrypt data up to 11 bytes less than the key size. It makes sure that the data fits in the modulus, and adds at least 8 bytes of random data to make sure that encrypting e.g. the word "Yes" twice does not result in two identical cipher texts. Finally, it makes sure you can find out the size in octets of the encrypted data, so you can simply encrypt the 16, 24 or 32 bytes that make up the AES key.

One thing to remember is that with RSA and actually many other
algorithms including AES usually, the "useful" data that you supply
isn't literally the data that's encrypted. Usually, some extra data
needs to be included, for example, indicating the actual length of the
data in some way, data for any integrity checking... To the user, the
number of input bytes doesn't necessarily equal the number of bytes
following encryption.
Comment Source
To get the right key size you can use an HashAlgorithm on the key (SHA), which will give you a fixed output-size. Otherwise you can just use the first 16bytes as key and ignore the rest? Good luck.