Rijndael Padding Error

Question

Hello I am trying to encrypt / decrypt a string via Rijaendal. I simply can't figure out why the decryption blows up. I always end up with an incorrect padding error. One thing that throws me off is the result of my encryption which I return as HEX array. It has a length of 14 bytes. In my decryption function, the same byte array ends up having 16 bytes upon conversion from HEX.

Any help would be appreciated:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace rjandal
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string DataForEncrypting = "this is a test";

            string key = string.Empty;
            string iv = string.Empty;

            using (System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged rmt = new System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged())
            {
                rmt.KeySize = 256;
                rmt.BlockSize = 128;
                rmt.Mode = System.Security.Cryptography.CipherMode.CBC;
                rmt.Padding = System.Security.Cryptography.PaddingMode.ISO10126;
                rmt.GenerateKey();
                rmt.GenerateIV();
                key = Convert.ToBase64String(rmt.Key);
                iv = Convert.ToBase64String(rmt.IV);
            }

            string encryptedData = _encrypt(DataForEncrypting, key, iv);
            string unencryptedData = _decrypt(key, iv, HexString2Ascii(encryptedData));

            Console.WriteLine(unencryptedData);
            Console.WriteLine(encryptedData);
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        private static string _encrypt(string value, string key, string initVector)
        {
            byte[] buffer = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(value);
            byte[] encBuffer;
            using (System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged rmt = new System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged())
            {
                rmt.KeySize = 256;
                rmt.BlockSize = 128;
                rmt.Mode = System.Security.Cryptography.CipherMode.CBC;
                rmt.Padding = System.Security.Cryptography.PaddingMode.ISO10126;
                encBuffer = rmt.CreateEncryptor(Convert.FromBase64String(key),
                    Convert.FromBase64String(initVector)).TransformFinalBlock(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
            }
            string encryptValue = ConvertToHex(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(encBuffer));
            return encryptValue;
        }

        private static string _decrypt(string key, string initVector, string value)
        {
            byte[] hexBuffer = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(value);
            byte[] decBuffer;
            using (System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged rmt = new System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged())
            {
                rmt.KeySize = 256;
                rmt.BlockSize = 128;
                rmt.Mode = System.Security.Cryptography.CipherMode.CBC;
                rmt.Padding = System.Security.Cryptography.PaddingMode.ISO10126;
                decBuffer = rmt.CreateDecryptor(Convert.FromBase64String(key),
                    Convert.FromBase64String(initVector)).TransformFinalBlock(hexBuffer, 0, hexBuffer.Length);
            }

            return System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(decBuffer);
        } 

        private static string ConvertToHex(string asciiString)
        {
            string hex = "";
            foreach (char c in asciiString)
            {
                int tmp = c;
                hex += String.Format("{0:x2}", (uint)System.Convert.ToUInt32(tmp.ToString()));
            }
            return hex;
        }

        private static string HexString2Ascii(string hexString)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            for (int i = 0; i <= hexString.Length - 2; i += 2)
            {
                sb.Append(Convert.ToString(Convert.ToChar(Int32.Parse(hexString.Substring(i, 2), System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber))));
            }
            return sb.ToString();
        }

    }
}

Answer 1

You shouldn't be using ASCII character encoding as an intermediate step; you should change your functions that go from hex to ASCII (and back again) to go from a byte[] to hex (and back again) instead.

    private static string ConvertToHex(byte[] data)
    {
        string hex = "";
        foreach (byte b in data)
        {
            hex += b.ToString("X2");
        }
        return hex;
    }

    private static byte[] HexString2ByteArray(string hexString)
    {
        byte[] output = new byte[hexString.Length / 2];

        for (int i = 0; i <= hexString.Length - 2; i += 2)
        {
             output[i/2] = Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(i, 2), 16);
        }
        return output;
    }

As a side note, is there a reason that you're looking for a hex representation of the array versus something more compact like Base64? You're using Base64 in your example to transfer the key and IV, so I'm just curious about what makes you want to return the encrypted data as hex here.

In any case, here's something that should work for you:

    private static string _encrypt(string value, string key, string initVector)
    {
        byte[] buffer = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(value);
        byte[] encBuffer;
        using (System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged rmt = new System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged())
        {
            rmt.KeySize = 256;
            rmt.BlockSize = 128;
            rmt.Mode = System.Security.Cryptography.CipherMode.CBC;
            rmt.Padding = System.Security.Cryptography.PaddingMode.ISO10126;
            encBuffer = rmt.CreateEncryptor(Convert.FromBase64String(key),
                Convert.FromBase64String(initVector)).TransformFinalBlock(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
        }
        string encryptValue = ConvertToHex(encBuffer);
        return encryptValue;
    }

    private static string _decrypt(string key, string initVector, string value)
    {
        byte[] hexBuffer = HexString2ByteArray(value);
        byte[] decBuffer;
        using (System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged rmt = new System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged())
        {
            rmt.KeySize = 256;
            rmt.BlockSize = 128;
            rmt.Mode = System.Security.Cryptography.CipherMode.CBC;
            rmt.Padding = System.Security.Cryptography.PaddingMode.ISO10126;
            decBuffer = rmt.CreateDecryptor(Convert.FromBase64String(key),
                Convert.FromBase64String(initVector)).TransformFinalBlock(hexBuffer, 0, hexBuffer.Length);
        }

        return Encoding.Unicode.GetString(decBuffer);
    }