AES-256 Password Based Encryption/Decryption in Java

Question

I found a guide for implementing AES encryption/decryption in Java and tried to understand each line as I put it into my own solution. However, I don't fully understand it and am having issues as a result. The end goal is to have passphrase based encryption/decryption. I've read other articles/stackoverflow posts about this, but most do not provide enough explanation (I am very new to crypto in Java)

My main issues right now are that even when I set byte[] saltBytes = "Hello".getBytes(); I still get a different Base64 result in the end (char[] password is random each time, but I read that it is safer to leave passwords in char[] form. My other problem is that when the program gets to decrypt(), I get a NullPointerException at byte[] saltBytes = salt.getBytes("UTF-8");

Thank you in advance for any help/advice you can give me.

The code in question:

import java.security.AlgorithmParameters;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
import java.security.SecureRandom;

import javax.crypto.BadPaddingException;
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.IllegalBlockSizeException;
import javax.crypto.SecretKey;
import javax.crypto.SecretKeyFactory;
import javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;

public class EncryptionDecryption {

    private static String salt;
    private static int iterations = 65536  ;
    private static int keySize = 256;
    private static byte[] ivBytes;

    public static void main(String []args) throws Exception {

        char[] message = "PasswordToEncrypt".toCharArray();
        System.out.println("Message: " + message.toString());
        System.out.println("Encrypted: " + encrypt(message));
        System.out.println("Decrypted: " + decrypt(encrypt(message).toCharArray()));
    }

    public static String encrypt(char[] plaintext) throws Exception {

        salt = getSalt();
        byte[] saltBytes = salt.getBytes();

        SecretKeyFactory skf = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
        PBEKeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(plaintext, saltBytes, iterations, keySize);
        SecretKey secretKey = skf.generateSecret(spec);
        SecretKeySpec secretSpec = new SecretKeySpec(secretKey.getEncoded(), "AES");

        Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding");
        cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secretSpec);
        AlgorithmParameters params = cipher.getParameters();
        ivBytes = params.getParameterSpec(IvParameterSpec.class).getIV();
        byte[] encryptedTextBytes = cipher.doFinal(plaintext.toString().getBytes("UTF-8"));

        return DatatypeConverter.printBase64Binary(encryptedTextBytes);
    }

    public static String decrypt(char[] encryptedText) throws Exception {

        byte[] saltBytes = salt.getBytes("UTF-8");
        byte[] encryptedTextBytes = DatatypeConverter.parseBase64Binary(encryptedText.toString());

        SecretKeyFactory skf = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
        PBEKeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(encryptedText, saltBytes, iterations, keySize);
        SecretKey secretkey = skf.generateSecret(spec);
        SecretKeySpec secretSpec = new SecretKeySpec(secretkey.getEncoded(), "AES");

        Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding");
        cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, secretSpec, new IvParameterSpec(ivBytes));

        byte[] decryptedTextBytes = null;

        try {
            decryptedTextBytes = cipher.doFinal(encryptedTextBytes);
        }   catch (IllegalBlockSizeException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }   catch (BadPaddingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return decryptedTextBytes.toString();

    }

    public static String getSalt() throws Exception {

        SecureRandom sr = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG");
        byte[] salt = new byte[20];
        sr.nextBytes(salt);
        return salt.toString();
    }
}

Answer 1

I think that you are making two mistakes :)

I've corrected your sample code to make it work :

import java.security.AlgorithmParameters;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
import java.security.SecureRandom;

import javax.crypto.BadPaddingException;
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.IllegalBlockSizeException;
import javax.crypto.SecretKey;
import javax.crypto.SecretKeyFactory;
import javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;

public class EncryptionDecryption {

    private static String salt;
    private static int iterations = 65536  ;
    private static int keySize = 256;
    private static byte[] ivBytes;

    private static SecretKey secretKey;

    public static void main(String []args) throws Exception {

        salt = getSalt();

        char[] message = "PasswordToEncrypt".toCharArray();
        System.out.println("Message: " + String.valueOf(message));
        System.out.println("Encrypted: " + encrypt(message));
        System.out.println("Decrypted: " + decrypt(encrypt(message).toCharArray()));
    }

    public static String encrypt(char[] plaintext) throws Exception {
        byte[] saltBytes = salt.getBytes();

        SecretKeyFactory skf = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
        PBEKeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(plaintext, saltBytes, iterations, keySize);
        secretKey = skf.generateSecret(spec);
        SecretKeySpec secretSpec = new SecretKeySpec(secretKey.getEncoded(), "AES");

        Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding");
        cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secretSpec);
        AlgorithmParameters params = cipher.getParameters();
        ivBytes = params.getParameterSpec(IvParameterSpec.class).getIV();
        byte[] encryptedTextBytes = cipher.doFinal(String.valueOf(plaintext).getBytes("UTF-8"));

        return DatatypeConverter.printBase64Binary(encryptedTextBytes);
    }

    public static String decrypt(char[] encryptedText) throws Exception {

        System.out.println(encryptedText);

        byte[] encryptedTextBytes = DatatypeConverter.parseBase64Binary(new String(encryptedText));
        SecretKeySpec secretSpec = new SecretKeySpec(secretKey.getEncoded(), "AES");

        Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding");
        cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, secretSpec, new IvParameterSpec(ivBytes));

        byte[] decryptedTextBytes = null;

        try {
            decryptedTextBytes = cipher.doFinal(encryptedTextBytes);
        }   catch (IllegalBlockSizeException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }   catch (BadPaddingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return new String(decryptedTextBytes);

    }

    public static String getSalt() throws Exception {

        SecureRandom sr = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG");
        byte[] salt = new byte[20];
        sr.nextBytes(salt);
        return new String(salt);
    }
}

The first mistake is that you generate 2 different salts (when using the encrypt method), so encrypted/decrypted logs were differents (logical, but the decryption would still work because you are calling the decryption directly after encryption).

The second mistake was for the secret key. You need to generate a secret key when you are encrypting, but not decrypting. To put it more simply, it is as if i was encrypting with the password "encrypt" and that you are trying to decrypt it with the password "decrypt".

I would advise you to generate every random stuff (such as private key, salt etc on startup). But beware that when you'll stop your app, you won't be able to decrypt old stuff unless getting the exact same random stuff.

Hope I helped :)

Regards,