javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: Message is larger than modulus

Question

I am working on a project where I need to show some encryption decryption over the RMI network. I am using RSA system for this. On decryption, my code is giving me the following error :

javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: Message is larger than modulus
    at sun.security.rsa.RSACore.parseMsg(RSACore.java:182)
    at sun.security.rsa.RSACore.crypt(RSACore.java:112)
    at sun.security.rsa.RSACore.rsa(RSACore.java:103)
    at com.sun.crypto.provider.RSACipher.doFinal(RSACipher.java:355)
    at com.sun.crypto.provider.RSACipher.engineDoFinal(RSACipher.java:382)
    at javax.crypto.Cipher.doFinal(Cipher.java:2087)
    at Node.decryptData(Node.java:463)
    at Node.receiveMsgL(Node.java:451)
    at MiniServer.callLeaderR(MiniServer.java:89)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
    at sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef.dispatch(UnicastServerRef.java:322)
    at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Transport.java:177)
    at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Transport.java:174)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at sun.rmi.transport.Transport.serviceCall(Transport.java:173)
    at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport.handleMessages(TCPTransport.java:556)
    at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run0(TCPTransport.java:811)
    at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run(TCPTransport.java:670)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:744)

This is my decryption code :

private void decryptData(String PrivateK,byte[] data) throws IOException {
        System.out.println("\n-------DECRYPTION STARTED----");
        byte[] descryptedData = null;

        try {
            PrivateKey privateKey = readPrivateKeyFromFile(PrivateK);
            Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("RSA");
            cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, privateKey);
            descryptedData = cipher.doFinal(data);
            System.out.println("Decrypted Data: " + new String(descryptedData));

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }   

        System.out.println("------DECRYPTION COMPLETED-----");      
    }

I have tried using cipher.update(byte[] data) while encrypting. I have String data and I convert it to byte array using string.getByte() while encrypting. If I use update method, it gives me an error of IllegalBlockException that data cannot be larger than modulus.

Please help me out in this. I am unable to find the bug in my code.

Answer 1

Asymmetric ciphers like RSA are designed to encrypt short data, typically an symmetric key, while large data is encrypted with symmetric block ciphers (which symmetric key will be exchanged with an asymmetric ciphers). There are really a lot of similar questions and answers on StackOverflow. This one is one provides quite good answer.