AES encrypt/decrypt with Bouncy Castle provider

Question

Here is my implementation of a AES 256 encrypt and decrypt, developed with the native library of JDK 5:

public static String encrypt(String key, String toEncrypt) throws Exception {
    Key skeySpec = generateKeySpec(key);
    Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
    cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, skeySpec);
    byte[] encrypted = cipher.doFinal(toEncrypt.getBytes());
    byte[] encryptedValue = Base64.encodeBase64(encrypted);
    return new String(encryptedValue);
}

public static String decrypt(String key, String encrypted) throws Exception {
    Key skeySpec = generateKeySpec(key);
    Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
    cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, skeySpec);
    byte[] decodedBytes = Base64.decodeBase64(encrypted.getBytes());
    byte[] original = cipher.doFinal(decodedBytes);
    return new String(original);
}

I want to implement the same methods with the Boucy Castle API (Java): I've searched a lot, tested a lot, without results ... can someone help me?

Thanks

Answer 1

You would either use

Security.addProvider(new BouncyCastleProvider());
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES", "BC");

or else

Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES", new BouncyCastleProvider());

That said, Cipher.getInstance("AES") uses Electronic Codebook, which is insecure. You either want Cipher Block Chaining (Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding")) or Counter (Cipher.getInstance("AES/CTR/NoPadding")) modes; they are both secure, the primary difference being that CBC requires padding while CTR does not.