How to understand the difference between these encoded strings?

Question

Test Text: username Encryption Result:

uname1 = b'\x01\x02\x02\x00x]n\xe8\xe6\xae\xae\xdf\xb7F\x87^!\xc1l8\x0eC\xb0\xcc\xf5\x00\xe7%j\xa2S\xc7\x84\xb4\xf2\xea]\x01K\xf9\xf9\xe7c\xa7\xc8A\xec\xf3\xd1\x9f\xd9\x9f\x86\xb7\x00\x00\x00f0d\x06\t*\x86H\x86\xf7\r\x01\x07\x06\xa0W0U\x02\x01\x000P\x06\t*\x86H\x86\xf7\r\x01\x07\x010\x1e\x06\t`\x86H\x01e\x03\x04\x01.0\x11\x04\x0c;\xaa\xe9\x03\x84\x00Z\x96"\t/\x18\x02\x01\x10\x80#\xdd\xf1C\xafy\x1e\xf07Z\x0fI_\ncr\x80\xdc\xf5>o\xb9`\x1a\xf8\x0c\xec\x0f\xc3\xd1\x8f\xdd\xe6~\xca\x16'

Supposedly the following is also the result of username being encrypted by KMS and I have to decrypt it:

uname2 = "AQICAHiRhVOkDetQTv51rimwyQpfSKJYi6zefQF+Wz32zFAYKwEyMctEfb/Oos0Mq48uPt2AAAAAZjBkBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagVzBVAgEAMFAGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM7vxxEHGmH5vHJX1zAgEQgCM2Uee6e6zM0mQgli9kXQVJ3pNid+waG6nrDnB9P3VjVquaCA=="

Decrypting uname1 works just fine but uname2 does not work and results in the following error:botocore.errorfactory.InvalidCiphertextException: An error occurred (InvalidCiphertextException) when calling the Decrypt operation:

Documentation I was following: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/programming-encryption.html

I am trying to decryptuname2, uname1 was just a local test I did.

Is this a character encoding issue? Why do the strings look so different?

Answer 1

You simply need to decode the uname2 string, as it is Base64 encoded after being encrypted. You will then be able to decipher it.