Question

I have taken the decrypt code from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.cryptostream.aspx and modified it as follows below. I have an encrypted example, and it works just fine while decoding. But when using the encryption function, it returns junk string with strange symbols. below are the functions of encrypt/decrypt.

An example of encrypted string “hey” : “???U?b???z?Y???”

When decoded again: “ûc{ÁpÅ`ñ”””

I’m using this code to convert the byte array to string:

private string ByteArrayToString(byte[] input)
    {
        ASCIIEncoding dec = new ASCIIEncoding();
        return dec.GetString(input);
    }

here are the encrypt/decrypt functions. the decryption function is working fine.

private string DecryptStringFromBytesAes(byte[] cipherText, byte[] Key, byte[] IV)
    {
        // Check arguments. 
        if (cipherText == null || cipherText.Length <= 0)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("cipherText");
        if (Key == null || Key.Length <= 0)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("Key");

        // Declare the string used to hold 
        // the decrypted text.
        string plaintext = null;

        // Create an RijndaelManaged object 
        // with the specified key and IV. 
        using (RijndaelManaged aesAlg = new RijndaelManaged())
        {
            aesAlg.Key = Key;
            aesAlg.Padding = PaddingMode.Zeros;
            aesAlg.Mode = CipherMode.ECB;

            // Create a decrytor to perform the stream transform.
            ICryptoTransform decryptor = aesAlg.CreateDecryptor(aesAlg.Key, aesAlg.IV);

            // Create the streams used for decryption. 
            using (MemoryStream msDecrypt = new MemoryStream(cipherText))
            {
                using (CryptoStream csDecrypt = new CryptoStream(msDecrypt, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read))
                {
                    using (StreamReader srDecrypt = new StreamReader(csDecrypt))
                    {

                        // Read the decrypted bytes from the decrypting stream 
                        // and place them in a string.
                        plaintext = srDecrypt.ReadToEnd();
                    }
                }
            }

        }

        return plaintext;

    }




private byte[] EncryptStringToBytesAes(string plainText, byte[] Key, byte[] IV)
    {
        // Check arguments. 
        if (plainText == null || plainText.Length <= 0)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("plainText");
        if (Key == null || Key.Length <= 0)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("Key");
        byte[] encrypted;
        // Create an RijndaelManaged object 
        // with the specified key and IV. 
        using (RijndaelManaged aesAlg = new RijndaelManaged())
        {
            aesAlg.Key = Key;
            aesAlg.Padding = PaddingMode.Zeros;
            aesAlg.Mode = CipherMode.ECB;
            // Create a decrytor to perform the stream transform.
            ICryptoTransform encryptor = aesAlg.CreateEncryptor(aesAlg.Key, aesAlg.IV);

            // Create the streams used for encryption. 
            using (MemoryStream msEncrypt = new MemoryStream())
            {
                using (CryptoStream csEncrypt = new CryptoStream(msEncrypt, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
                {
                    using (StreamWriter swEncrypt = new StreamWriter(csEncrypt))
                    {

                        //Write all data to the stream.
                        swEncrypt.Write(plainText);
                    }
                    encrypted = msEncrypt.ToArray();
                }
            }
        }
        return encrypted;

    }

Answer 1

In order to have your output as a hexadecimal encoding of the data, follow the methods found here. I modified them slightly to be extension methods:

    public static string ToHexString(this byte[] bytes)
    {
        return bytes == null ? string.Empty : BitConverter.ToString(bytes).Replace("-", string.Empty);
    }

    public static byte[] FromHexString(this string hexString)
    {
        if (hexString == null)
        {
            return new byte[0];
        }

        var numberChars = hexString.Length;
        var bytes = new byte[numberChars / 2];

        for (var i = 0; i < numberChars; i += 2)
        {
            bytes[i / 2] = Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(i, 2), 16);
        }

        return bytes;
    }