Good AES Initialization Vector practice
C#Initialization VectorAescryptoserviceproviderC# Problem Overview
per my question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8041153/aes-encryption-missing-an-important-piece, I have now learned that my assumption for creating a reversible encryption on a string was a bit off. I now have
public static byte[] EncryptString(string toEncrypt, byte[] encryptionKey)
{
var toEncryptBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(toEncrypt);
using (var provider = new AesCryptoServiceProvider())
{
provider.Key = encryptionKey;
provider.Mode = CipherMode.CBC;
provider.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;
using (var encryptor = provider.CreateEncryptor(provider.Key, provider.IV))
{
using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var cs = new CryptoStream(ms, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
{
cs.Write(toEncryptBytes, 0, toEncryptBytes.Length);
cs.FlushFinalBlock();
}
return ms.ToArray();
}
}
}
}
and this produces consistent results; however, I will not be able to decrypt without knowing/ setting the initialization vector. I really do not want to pass three values into this method (on for the IV), which leaves me with hardcoding the IV or deriving it from the key. I'd like to know if this is a good practice, or if it will render the encrypted value vulnerable to attack somehow... or am I really overthinking this and should just hardcode the IV?
UPDATE Per Iridium's suggestion, I tried something like this instead:
public static byte[] EncryptString(string toEncrypt, byte[] encryptionKey)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(toEncrypt)) throw new ArgumentException("toEncrypt");
if (encryptionKey == null || encryptionKey.Length == 0) throw new ArgumentException("encryptionKey");
var toEncryptBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(toEncrypt);
using (var provider = new AesCryptoServiceProvider())
{
provider.Key = encryptionKey;
provider.Mode = CipherMode.CBC;
provider.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;
using (var encryptor = provider.CreateEncryptor(provider.Key, provider.IV))
{
using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
ms.Write(provider.IV, 0, 16);
using (var cs = new CryptoStream(ms, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
{
cs.Write(toEncryptBytes, 0, toEncryptBytes.Length);
cs.FlushFinalBlock();
}
return ms.ToArray();
}
}
}
}
public static string DecryptString(byte[] encryptedString, byte[] encryptionKey)
{
using (var provider = new AesCryptoServiceProvider())
{
provider.Key = encryptionKey;
provider.Mode = CipherMode.CBC;
provider.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;
using (var ms = new MemoryStream(encryptedString))
{
byte[] buffer;
ms.Read(buffer, 0, 16);
provider.IV = buffer;
using (var decryptor = provider.CreateDecryptor(provider.Key, provider.IV))
{
using (var cs = new CryptoStream(ms, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read))
{
byte[] decrypted = new byte[encryptedString.Length];
var byteCount = cs.Read(decrypted, 0, encryptedString.Length);
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decrypted, 0, byteCount);
}
}
}
}
}
however, this shows something odd in my unit test:
[TestMethod]
public void EncryptionClosedLoopTest()
{
var roundtrip = "This is the data I am encrypting. There are many like it but this is my encryption.";
var encrypted = Encryption.EncryptString(roundtrip, encryptionKey);
var decrypted = Encryption.DecryptString(encrypted, encryptionKey);
Assert.IsTrue(roundtrip == decrypted);
}
my decrypted text shows up as "92ʪ�F"�,hpv0�� I am encrypting. There are many like it but this is my encryption." which seems almost right but of course completely wrong. It looks like I'm close though. Am I missing an offset on the memory stream?
C# Solutions
Solution 1 - C#
The IV should be random and unique for every run of your encryption method. Deriving it from the key/message or hard-coding it is not sufficiently secure. The IV can be generated within this method, instead of passed into it, and written to the output stream prior to the encrypted data.
When decrypting, the IV can then be read from the input before the encrypted data.
Solution 2 - C#
When Encrypting, generate your IV and pre-pend it to the cipher text (something like this)
using (var aes= new AesCryptoServiceProvider()
{
Key = PrivateKey,
Mode = CipherMode.CBC,
Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7
})
{
var input = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(originalPayload);
aes.GenerateIV();
var iv = aes.IV;
using (var encrypter = aes.CreateEncryptor(aes.Key, iv))
using (var cipherStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var tCryptoStream = new CryptoStream(cipherStream, encrypter, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
using (var tBinaryWriter = new BinaryWriter(tCryptoStream))
{
//Prepend IV to data
//tBinaryWriter.Write(iv); This is the original broken code, it encrypts the iv
cipherStream.Write(iv); //Write iv to the plain stream (not tested though)
tBinaryWriter.Write(input);
tCryptoStream.FlushFinalBlock();
}
string encryptedPayload = Convert.ToBase64String(cipherStream.ToArray());
}
}
When decrypting this back, get first 16 bytes out and use it in crypto stream
var aes= new AesCryptoServiceProvider()
{
Key = PrivateKey,
Mode = CipherMode.CBC,
Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7
};
//get first 16 bytes of IV and use it to decrypt
var iv = new byte[16];
Array.Copy(input, 0, iv, 0, iv.Length);
using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var cs = new CryptoStream(ms, aes.CreateDecryptor(aes.Key, iv), CryptoStreamMode.Write))
using (var binaryWriter = new BinaryWriter(cs))
{
//Decrypt Cipher Text from Message
binaryWriter.Write(
input,
iv.Length,
input.Length - iv.Length
);
}
return Encoding.Default.GetString(ms.ToArray());
}
Solution 3 - C#
Great input from folks. I took the combined answers from ankurpatel and Konstantin and cleaned it up and added some convenient method overrides. This works as of June 2019 in .NET Core 2.2.
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;
private const int AesKeySize = 16;
public static void Main()
{
// the data to encrypt
var message = "Here is some data to encrypt!";
// create KeySize character key
var key = "g(KMDu(EEw63.*V`";
// encrypt the string to a string
var encrypted = AesEncrypt(message, key);
// decrypt the string to a string.
var decrypted = AesDecrypt(encrypted, key);
// display the original data and the decrypted data
Console.WriteLine($"Original: text: {encrypted}");
Console.WriteLine($"Round Trip: text: {decrypted}");
}
static string AesEncrypt(string data, string key)
{
return AesEncrypt(data, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key));
}
static string AesDecrypt(string data, string key)
{
return AesDecrypt(data, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key));
}
static string AesEncrypt(string data, byte[] key)
{
return Convert.ToBase64String(AesEncrypt(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data), key));
}
static string AesDecrypt(string data, byte[] key)
{
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(AesDecrypt(Convert.FromBase64String(data), key));
}
static byte[] AesEncrypt(byte[] data, byte[] key)
{
if (data == null || data.Length <= 0)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException($"{nameof(data)} cannot be empty");
}
if (key == null || key.Length != AesKeySize)
{
throw new ArgumentException($"{nameof(key)} must be length of {AesKeySize}");
}
using (var aes = new AesCryptoServiceProvider
{
Key = key,
Mode = CipherMode.CBC,
Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7
})
{
aes.GenerateIV();
var iv = aes.IV;
using (var encrypter = aes.CreateEncryptor(aes.Key, iv))
using (var cipherStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var tCryptoStream = new CryptoStream(cipherStream, encrypter, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
using (var tBinaryWriter = new BinaryWriter(tCryptoStream))
{
// prepend IV to data
cipherStream.Write(iv);
tBinaryWriter.Write(data);
tCryptoStream.FlushFinalBlock();
}
var cipherBytes = cipherStream.ToArray();
return cipherBytes;
}
}
}
static byte[] AesDecrypt(byte[] data, byte[] key)
{
if (data == null || data.Length <= 0)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException($"{nameof(data)} cannot be empty");
}
if (key == null || key.Length != AesKeySize)
{
throw new ArgumentException($"{nameof(key)} must be length of {AesKeySize}");
}
using (var aes = new AesCryptoServiceProvider
{
Key = key,
Mode = CipherMode.CBC,
Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7
})
{
// get first KeySize bytes of IV and use it to decrypt
var iv = new byte[AesKeySize];
Array.Copy(data, 0, iv, 0, iv.Length);
using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var cs = new CryptoStream(ms, aes.CreateDecryptor(aes.Key, iv), CryptoStreamMode.Write))
using (var binaryWriter = new BinaryWriter(cs))
{
// decrypt cipher text from data, starting just past the IV
binaryWriter.Write(
data,
iv.Length,
data.Length - iv.Length
);
}
var dataBytes = ms.ToArray();
return dataBytes;
}
}
}
Solution 4 - C#
I modified your decryption method as follows and it works:
public static string DecryptString(byte[] encryptedString, byte[] encryptionKey)
{
using (var provider = new AesCryptoServiceProvider())
{
provider.Key = encryptionKey;
using (var ms = new MemoryStream(encryptedString))
{
// Read the first 16 bytes which is the IV.
byte[] iv = new byte[16];
ms.Read(iv, 0, 16);
provider.IV = iv;
using (var decryptor = provider.CreateDecryptor())
{
using (var cs = new CryptoStream(ms, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read))
{
using (var sr = new StreamReader(cs))
{
return sr.ReadToEnd();
}
}
}
}
}
}
The problem with your implementation is that you are reading too many bytes into the CryptoStream
. You really need to read encryptedText.Length - 16
. Using a StreamReader
simplifies this, since you don't need to worry about offsets anywhere anymore.
Solution 5 - C#
The accepted answer is correct, but doesn't provide a good example of how to get a random IV.
It turns out that this is a lot easier than people are trying to make it. The AesCryptoServiceProvider in .NET automatically generates a cryptographically random IV every time you construct one. And if you need to use the same instance for multiple encryptions, you can call GenerateIV()
You can also prepend the IV to the encrypted value before returning it and have the decrypting end pull it off
private static void Main(string[] args) {
var rnd = new Random();
var key = new byte[32]; // For this example, I'll use a random 32-byte key.
rnd.NextBytes(key);
var message = "This is a test";
// Looping to encrypt the same thing twice just to show that the IV changes.
for (var i = 0; i < 2; ++i) {
var encrypted = EncryptString(message, key);
Console.WriteLine(encrypted);
Console.WriteLine(DecryptString(encrypted, key));
}
}
public static string EncryptString(string message, byte[] key) {
var aes = new AesCryptoServiceProvider();
var iv = aes.IV;
using (var memStream = new System.IO.MemoryStream()) {
memStream.Write(iv, 0, iv.Length); // Add the IV to the first 16 bytes of the encrypted value
using (var cryptStream = new CryptoStream(memStream, aes.CreateEncryptor(key, aes.IV), CryptoStreamMode.Write)) {
using (var writer = new System.IO.StreamWriter(cryptStream)) {
writer.Write(message);
}
}
var buf = memStream.ToArray();
return Convert.ToBase64String(buf, 0, buf.Length);
}
}
public static string DecryptString(string encryptedValue, byte[] key) {
var bytes = Convert.FromBase64String(encryptedValue);
var aes = new AesCryptoServiceProvider();
using (var memStream = new System.IO.MemoryStream(bytes)) {
var iv = new byte[16];
memStream.Read(iv, 0, 16); // Pull the IV from the first 16 bytes of the encrypted value
using (var cryptStream = new CryptoStream(memStream, aes.CreateDecryptor(key, iv), CryptoStreamMode.Read)) {
using (var reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(cryptStream)) {
return reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
}
}
[EDIT: I modified my answer to include how to pass the IV in the encrypted value and get it when decrypting. I also refactored the example a bit]
Solution 6 - C#
In order to resolve the setting of IV on the provider (As Iridium pointed out):
ms.Read(provider.IV, 0, 16);
I added the following to your code:
var iv = new byte[provider.IV.Length];
memoryStream.Read(iv, 0, provider.IV.Length);
using (var decryptor = provider.CreateDecryptor(key, iv);
granted, my key is not set by the provider on each run. I generated it once and then stored it. The IV is randomly generated off of the provider for each encryption.
Solution 7 - C#
In my case, to generate the IV, I use something like this
/// <summary>
/// Derives password bytes
/// </summary>
/// <param name="Password">password</param>
/// <returns>derived bytes</returns>
private Rfc2898DeriveBytes DerivePass(string Password)
{
byte[] hash = CalcHash(Password);
Rfc2898DeriveBytes pdb = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes(Password, hash, _KEY_ITER);
return pdb;
}
/// <summary>
/// calculates the hash of the given string
/// </summary>
/// <param name="buffer">string to hash</param>
/// <returns>hash value (byte array)</returns>
private byte[] CalcHash(string buffer)
{
RIPEMD160 hasher = RIPEMD160.Create();
byte[] data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(buffer);
return hasher.ComputeHash(data);
}
that is, I calculate the password hash using RIPEMD160 and use it to generate the derived bytes, at that point, when it comes to intializing the encryption/decryption I just use something like this
Rfc2898DeriveBytes pdb = DerivePass(Password);
SymmetricAlgorithm alg = _engine;
alg.Key = pdb.GetBytes(_keySize);
alg.IV = pdb.GetBytes(_IVSize);
I don't know if it's "correct" (probably crypto gurus here will shoot at me :D), but, at least, it gives me a decent IV and I don't have to store it "somewhere" since just entering the correct password will give back the needed IV value; as a note, the _engine in the above example is declared as "SymmetricAlgorithm" and initialized using something like this
_engine = Rijndael.Create();
_keySize = (_engine.KeySize / 8);
_IVSize = (_engine.BlockSize / 8);
which creates the desired crypto objects and initializes the key and IV sizes
Solution 8 - C#
To generate random IV you would need a truly random number. Whichever language specific API you use for generating the random number, should generate true random number. Both android and ios have apis which generate random numbers based on sensor data.
I recently implemented AES 256 with random IV (Generated using really random numbers) and hashed key. For more secure(random IV + hashed key) cross platform (android, ios, c#) implementation of AES see my answer here - https://stackoverflow.com/a/24561148/2480840