Question

I’ve found plenty of examples how to do encryption in C#, and a couple for Android, but I’m particularly looking for a way to handle encrypting (using something like AES, TripleDES, etc.) from Android, and eventually wind up being decrypted in C#. I found an example for encoding AES in Android and encoding/decoding AES in C# but am not sure if these are compatible (C# requires an IV, nothing is specified for this in the Android example). Also, a recommendation on a good way of encoding the encrypted string for transmission over HTTP (Base64?) would be helpful. Thanks.

Answer 1

Got some help from http://oogifu.blogspot.com/2009/01/aes-in-java-and-c.html.

Here is my Java class:

package com.neocodenetworks.smsfwd;

import java.security.*;
import javax.crypto.*;
import javax.crypto.spec.*;
import android.util.Log;

public class Crypto {
    public static final String TAG = "smsfwd";

    private static Cipher aesCipher;
    private static SecretKey secretKey;
    private static IvParameterSpec ivParameterSpec;

    private static String CIPHER_TRANSFORMATION = "AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding";
    private static String CIPHER_ALGORITHM = "AES";
    // Replace me with a 16-byte key, share between Java and C#
    private static byte[] rawSecretKey = {0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
                                          0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00};

    private static String MESSAGEDIGEST_ALGORITHM = "MD5";

    public Crypto(String passphrase) {
        byte[] passwordKey = encodeDigest(passphrase);

        try {
            aesCipher = Cipher.getInstance(CIPHER_TRANSFORMATION);
        } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "No such algorithm " + CIPHER_ALGORITHM, e);
        } catch (NoSuchPaddingException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "No such padding PKCS5", e);
        }

        secretKey = new SecretKeySpec(passwordKey, CIPHER_ALGORITHM);
        ivParameterSpec = new IvParameterSpec(rawSecretKey);
    }

    public String encryptAsBase64(byte[] clearData) {
        byte[] encryptedData = encrypt(clearData);
        return net.iharder.base64.Base64.encodeBytes(encryptedData);
    }

    public byte[] encrypt(byte[] clearData) {
        try {
            aesCipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secretKey, ivParameterSpec);
        } catch (InvalidKeyException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "Invalid key", e);
            return null;
        } catch (InvalidAlgorithmParameterException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "Invalid algorithm " + CIPHER_ALGORITHM, e);
            return null;
        }

        byte[] encryptedData;
        try {
            encryptedData = aesCipher.doFinal(clearData);
        } catch (IllegalBlockSizeException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "Illegal block size", e);
            return null;
        } catch (BadPaddingException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "Bad padding", e);
            return null;
        }
        return encryptedData;
    }

    private byte[] encodeDigest(String text) {
        MessageDigest digest;
        try {
            digest = MessageDigest.getInstance(MESSAGEDIGEST_ALGORITHM);
            return digest.digest(text.getBytes());
        } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "No such algorithm " + MESSAGEDIGEST_ALGORITHM, e);
        }

        return null;
    }
}

I used http://iharder.sourceforge.net/current/java/base64/ for the base64 encoding.

Here’s my C# class:

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Security.Cryptography;

namespace smsfwdClient
{
    public class Crypto
    {
        private ICryptoTransform rijndaelDecryptor;
        // Replace me with a 16-byte key, share between Java and C#
        private static byte[] rawSecretKey = {0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
                                              0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00};

        public Crypto(string passphrase)
        {
            byte[] passwordKey = encodeDigest(passphrase);
            RijndaelManaged rijndael = new RijndaelManaged();
            rijndaelDecryptor = rijndael.CreateDecryptor(passwordKey, rawSecretKey);
        }

        public string Decrypt(byte[] encryptedData)
        {
            byte[] newClearData = rijndaelDecryptor.TransformFinalBlock(encryptedData, 0, encryptedData.Length);
            return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(newClearData);
        }

        public string DecryptFromBase64(string encryptedBase64)
        {
            return Decrypt(Convert.FromBase64String(encryptedBase64));
        }

        private byte[] encodeDigest(string text)
        {
            MD5CryptoServiceProvider x = new System.Security.Cryptography.MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
            byte[] data = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(text);
            return x.ComputeHash(data);
        }
    }
}

I really hope this helps someone else!