Java Decryption

Question

I have a problem with with

javax.crypto.Cipher

When I write this lines of code

    Cipher cipher;
    byte[] bytes = null;

    try
    {
        cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
        cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, generateAESKey128b(key));
        bytes = cipher.doFinal(input.getBytes("UTF-8"));
    }
    catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    catch (NoSuchPaddingException e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    catch (InvalidKeyException e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    catch (IllegalBlockSizeException e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    catch (BadPaddingException e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

The console give me this error

javax.crypto.IllegalBlockSizeException 
Input length must be multiple of 16 when    
decrypting with padded cipher
at com.sun.crypto.provider.SunJCE_f.b(DashoA13*..)
at com.sun.crypto.provider.SunJCE_f.b(DashoA13*..)
at com.sun.crypto.provider.AESCipher.engineDoFinal(DashoA13*..)
at javax.crypto.Cipher.doFinal(DashoA13*..)
at it.unitn.se.gym.backend.utils.Security.AES128Decode(Security.java:109)
at it.unitn.se.gym.backend.utils.Security.decode_AES128_Base64(Security.java:96)
at it.unitn.se.gym.backend.WebService.main(WebService.java:42)
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at it.unitn.se.gym.backend.utils.Security.decode_AES128_Base64(Security.java:97)
at it.unitn.se.gym.backend.WebService.main(WebService.java:42)

The first 2 lines of code are correct but when I pass the attribute "text", of type byte[], to the doFinal function, it give me the error.

Can someone tell me why?

SOLVED:

Okay, problem solved

byte[] encrypted = UniversalBase64Encoder.decode(input);
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, generateAESKey128b(key));
byte[] originalBytes = cipher.doFinal(encrypted);

This is the right code that I wrote

Answer 1

The problem is that you're trying to decrypt a string that was not encrypted, and in doing so are violating an assumption of the decryption algorithm (that its input size is always a multiple of 16).

Here's a block of code that encrypts and then decrypts a string. Notice that when the encrypted string is printed, it's 16 bytes long, even though the input string is not. The encryption algorithm pads the input string out to make it a multiple of 16 bytes before encrypting it. That 16-byte-long encrypted string is now a valid input for decryption.

This assumption (that the result of encrypting will be an even size) is quite standard. It not only makes the decryption/encryption algorithm easier to write, but it also prevents an attacker from knowing the length of the thing you encrypted.

byte[] keyBytes = new byte[16];
keyBytes[0] = 1;
SecretKeySpec key = new SecretKeySpec(keyBytes, "AES");
String input = "hello";
Cipher cipher;
byte[] bytes = null;
cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, key);
bytes = cipher.doFinal(input.getBytes("UTF-8"));

System.out.println("Encoded: "+Arrays.toString(bytes));

cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, key);
byte[] decoded = cipher.doFinal(bytes);

System.out.println("Decoded: "+new String(decoded, "UTF-8"));