How can I make my AES encryption identical between Java and Objective-C (iPhone)?

Question

I am encrypting a string in objective-c and also encrypting the same string in Java using AES and am seeing some strange issues. The first part of the result matches up to a certain point but then it is different, hence when i go to decode the result from Java onto the iPhone it cant decrypt it.

I am using a source string of "Now then and what is this nonsense all about. Do you know?" Using a key of "1234567890123456"

The objective-c code to encrypt is the following: NOTE: it is a NSData category so assume that the method is called on an NSData object so 'self' contains the byte data to encrypt.

   - (NSData *)AESEncryptWithKey:(NSString *)key {
 char keyPtr[kCCKeySizeAES128+1]; // room for terminator (unused)
 bzero(keyPtr, sizeof(keyPtr)); // fill with zeroes (for padding)

 // fetch key data
 [key getCString:keyPtr maxLength:sizeof(keyPtr) encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

 NSUInteger dataLength = [self length];

 //See the doc: For block ciphers, the output size will always be less than or 
 //equal to the input size plus the size of one block.
 //That's why we need to add the size of one block here
 size_t bufferSize = dataLength + kCCBlockSizeAES128;
 void *buffer = malloc(bufferSize);

 size_t numBytesEncrypted = 0;
 CCCryptorStatus cryptStatus = CCCrypt(kCCEncrypt, kCCAlgorithmAES128, kCCOptionPKCS7Padding,
            keyPtr, kCCKeySizeAES128,
            NULL /* initialization vector (optional) */,
            [self bytes], dataLength, /* input */
            buffer, bufferSize, /* output */
            &numBytesEncrypted);
 if (cryptStatus == kCCSuccess) {
  //the returned NSData takes ownership of the buffer and will free it on deallocation
  return [NSData dataWithBytesNoCopy:buffer length:numBytesEncrypted];
 }

 free(buffer); //free the buffer;
 return nil;
}

And the java encryption code is...

public byte[] encryptData(byte[] data, String key) {
    byte[] encrypted = null;

    Security.addProvider(new org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider());
    byte[] keyBytes = key.getBytes();

    SecretKeySpec keySpec = new SecretKeySpec(keyBytes, "AES");

    try {
        Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/ECB/PKCS7Padding", "BC");
        cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, keySpec);

        encrypted = new byte[cipher.getOutputSize(data.length)];
        int ctLength = cipher.update(data, 0, data.length, encrypted, 0);
        ctLength += cipher.doFinal(encrypted, ctLength);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        logger.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage());
    } finally {
        return encrypted;
    }
}

The hex output of the objective-c code is -

7a68ea36 8288c73d f7c45d8d 22432577 9693920a 4fae38b2 2e4bdcef 9aeb8afe 69394f3e 1eb62fa7 74da2b5c 8d7b3c89 a295d306 f1f90349 6899ac34 63a6efa0

and the java output is -

7a68ea36 8288c73d f7c45d8d 22432577 e66b32f9 772b6679 d7c0cb69 037b8740 883f8211 748229f4 723984beb 50b5aea1 f17594c9 fad2d05e e0926805 572156d

As you can see everything is fine up to -

7a68ea36 8288c73d f7c45d8d 22432577

I am guessing I have some of the settings different but can't work out what, I tried changing between ECB and CBC on the java side and it had no effect.

Can anyone help!? please....

Answer 1

Since the CCCrypt takes an IV, does it not use a chaining block cipher method (such as CBC)? This would be consistant with what you see: the first block is identical, but in the second block the Java version applies the original key to encrypt, but the OSX version seems to use something else.

EDIT:

From here I saw an example. Seems like you need to pass the kCCOptionECBMode to CCCrypt:

ccStatus = CCCrypt(encryptOrDecrypt,
        kCCAlgorithm3DES,
        kCCOptionECBMode, <-- this could help
        vkey, //"123456789012345678901234", //key
        kCCKeySize3DES,
        nil, //"init Vec", //iv,
        vplainText, //"Your Name", //plainText,
        plainTextBufferSize,
        (void *)bufferPtr,
        bufferPtrSize,
        &movedBytes);

EDIT 2:

I played around with some command line to see which one was right. I thought I could contribute it:

$ echo "Now then and what is this nonsense all about. Do you know?" | openssl enc -aes-128-ecb -K $(echo 1234567890123456 | xxd -p) -iv 0 | xxd 
0000000: 7a68 ea36 8288 c73d f7c4 5d8d 2243 2577  zh.6...=..]."C%w
0000010: e66b 32f9 772b 6679 d7c0 cb69 037b 8740  .k2.w+fy...i.{.@
0000020: 883f 8211 7482 29f4 7239 84be b50b 5aea  .?..t.).r9....Z.
0000030: eaa7 519b 65e8 fa26 a1bb de52 083b 478f  ..Q.e..&...R.;G.

Answer 2

I spent a few weeks decrypting a base64 encoded, AES256 encrypted string. Encryption was done by CCCrypt (Objective-C)on an iPad. The decryption was to be done in Java (using Bouncy Castle).

I finally succeeded and learnt quite a lot in the process. The encryption code was exactly the same as above (I guess it's taken from the Objective-C sample in the iPhone developer documentation).

What CCCrypt() documentation does NOT mention is that it uses CBC mode by default (if you don't specify an option like kCCOptionECBMode). It does mention that the IV, if not specified, defaults to all zeros (so IV will be a byte array of 0x00, 16 members in length).

Using these two pieces of information, you can create a functionally identical encryption module using CBC (and avoid using ECB which is less secure) on both Java and OSx/iphone/ipad(CCCrypt).

The Cipher init function will take the IV byte array as a third argument:

cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, keySpec, IV).

Answer 3

For anyone else who needs this, disown was absolutely spot on... the revised call to create the crypt in objective-c is as follows (note you need the ECB mode AND the padding)...

CCCryptorStatus cryptStatus = CCCrypt(kCCEncrypt, kCCAlgorithmAES128, kCCOptionECBMode + kCCOptionPKCS7Padding,
                                          keyPtr, kCCKeySizeAES128,
                                          NULL /* initialization vector (optional) */,
                                          [self bytes], dataLength, /* input */
                                          buffer, bufferSize, /* output */
                                          &numBytesEncrypted);

Answer 4

Just to add to the first post: in your objective C/cocoa code you used CBC mode and in your java code you used EBC and an IV initialization vector wasn't used in either. EBC cipher is block by block and CBC chains upon the preceding block, so if your text is smaller than 1 block (=16 bytes in your example), the cipher text produced by both are decryptable by the other (the same).

If you are looking for a way to standardize your use of the ciphers, NIST Special Publication 800-38A, 2001 Edition has test vectors. I can post code for the AES CBC and EBC vectors if it's helpful to anyone.