iOS Swift 2 Generate AES Key

Question

I want to randomly generate an AES 256 key. Swift provides the SecKeyGeneratePair which is to generate an asymmetric encryption key. Is there an equivalence for generating a symmetrical encryption key?

Answer 1

If you are randomly generating the key, all you need to do is use a CSPRNG (cryptographically-secure psuedorandom number generator) to generate an array of 256 bits. You should use SecRandomCopyBytes from the Randomization Services . Calling this with a count of 32 (32 bytes == 256 bits) will yield a suitable key.