Question

AES Encryption + Java. I was searching for a state of the art encryption.. and I read up on NIST establishing the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) in 2001. The chosen algorithm was called Rijndael, made by 2 young Belgian Cryptographers.

I'm interested in implementing that encryption in my own programs - and have already made a running AES-128 (also comes in 192 and 256) with the assistance of this tutorial: http://www.code2learn.com/2011/06/encryption-and-decryption-of-data-using.html

Here is my code:
http://pastebin.com/2sbkK4ME

Question below vv

Answer 1

I heard there is a number of ways to implement AES encryption.. some more secure than others. I'm interested in getting a better understanding of the encryption, and how to better implement that in java.

I'm interested in pointers about how to improve the code, where to look to get a better understanding of AES and java, and how secure the program's encryption currently is.

Answer 2

AES is a symmetric key algorithm, which means the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt the data. It also means that said key needs to remain a secret between all parties, because anyone with the key can decrypt the data.

I'm not sure that the code can be improved upon that much. Most of the algorithm seems to be contained in the libraries. Java libraries tend to be very secure because there is so much penetration testing done on them.

The best way to understand what is going on is to look into the documentation of the classes being used in the program.