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Decrypting CryptoStream into MemoryStream

I have written a process where a file is encrypted and uploaded to Azure, then the download process has to be decrypted which is what fails with a "Padding is invalid and cannot be removed" error, or a "Length of the data to decrypt is invalid." error.
I've tried numerous solutions online, including C# Decrypting mp3 file using RijndaelManaged and CryptoStream, but none of them seem to work and I end up just bouncing back and forth between these two errors. The encryption process uses the same key/IV pair that decryption uses, and since it will decrypt a portion of the stream I feel like that's working fine - it just ends up dying with the above errors.
Here is my code, any ideas? Please note that the three variants (cryptoStream.CopyTo(decryptedStream), do {} and while) aren't run together - they are here to show the options I've already tried, all of which fail.
byte[] encryptedBytes = null;
using (var encryptedStream = new MemoryStream())
{
//download from Azure
cloudBlockBlob.DownloadToStream(encryptedStream);
//reset positioning for reading it back out
encryptedStream.Position = 0;
encryptedBytes = encryptedStream.ConvertToByteArray();
}
//used for the blob stream from Azure
using (var encryptedStream = new MemoryStream(encryptedBytes))
{
//stream where decrypted contents will be stored
using (var decryptedStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var aes = new RijndaelManaged { KeySize = 256, Key = blobKey.Key, IV = blobKey.IV })
{
using (var decryptor = aes.CreateDecryptor())
{
//decrypt stream and write it to parent stream
using (var cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(encryptedStream, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read))
{
//fails here with "Length of the data to decrypt is invalid." error
cryptoStream.CopyTo(decryptedStream);
int data;
//fails here with "Length of the data to decrypt is invalid." error after it loops a number of times,
//implying it is in fact decrypting part of it, just not everything
do
{
data = cryptoStream.ReadByte();
decryptedStream.WriteByte((byte)cryptoStream.ReadByte());
} while (!cryptoStream.HasFlushedFinalBlock);
//fails here with "Length of the data to decrypt is invalid." error after it loops a number of times,
//implying it is in fact decrypting part of it, just not everything
while ((data = cryptoStream.ReadByte()) != -1)
{
decryptedStream.WriteByte((byte)data);
}
}
}
}
//reset position in prep for reading
decryptedStream.Position = 0;
return decryptedStream.ConvertToByteArray();
}
}
One of the comments mentioned wanting to know what ConvertToByteArray is, and it's just a simple extension method:
/// <summary>
/// Converts a Stream into a byte array.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="stream">The stream to convert.</param>
/// <returns>A byte[] array representing the current stream.</returns>
public static byte[] ConvertToByteArray(this Stream stream)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[16 * 1024];
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
int read;
while ((read = stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
ms.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
return ms.ToArray();
}
}
The code never reaches this though - it dies before I can ever get it to this point.

After a lot of back and forth from various blogs, I found I actually had a couple of errors in the above code that were nailing me. First, the encryption process was incorrectly writing the array - it was wrapped with a CryptoStream instance, but wasn't actually utilizing that so I was writing the unencrypted data to Azure. Here is the proper route to go with this (fileKey is part of a custom class I created to generate Key/IV pairs, so wherever that is referenced can be changed to the built-in process from RijndaelManaged or anything else you'd utilize for coming up with a key/IV pair):
using (var aes = new RijndaelManaged { KeySize = 256, Key = fileKey.Key, IV = fileKey.IV })
{
using (var encryptedStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (ICryptoTransform encryptor = aes.CreateEncryptor())
{
using (CryptoStream cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(encryptedStream, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
{
using (var originalByteStream = new MemoryStream(file.File.Data))
{
int data;
while ((data = originalByteStream.ReadByte()) != -1)
cryptoStream.WriteByte((byte)data);
}
}
}
var encryptedBytes = encryptedStream.ToArray();
return encryptedBytes;
}
}
Second, since my encryption process involves multiple steps (three total keys per file - container, filename and file itself), when I tried to decrypt, I was using the wrong key (which is seen above when I referenced blobKey to decrypt, which was actually the key used for encrypting the filename and not the file itself. The proper decryption method was:
//used for the blob stream from Azure
using (var encryptedStream = new MemoryStream(encryptedBytes))
{
//stream where decrypted contents will be stored
using (var decryptedStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var aes = new RijndaelManaged { KeySize = 256, Key = blobKey.Key, IV = blobKey.IV })
{
using (var decryptor = aes.CreateDecryptor())
{
//decrypt stream and write it to parent stream
using (var cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(encryptedStream, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read))
{
int data;
while ((data = cryptoStream.ReadByte()) != -1)
decryptedStream.WriteByte((byte)data);
}
}
}
//reset position in prep for reading
decryptedStream.Position = 0;
return decryptedStream.ConvertToByteArray();
}
}
I had looked into the Azure Encryption Extensions (http://www.stefangordon.com/introducing-azure-encryption-extensions/), but it was a little more local file-centric than I was interested - everything on my end is streams/in-memory only, and retrofitting that utility was going to be more work than it was worth.
Hopefully this helps anyone looking to encrypt Azure blobs with zero reliance on the underlying file system!

Bit late to the party, but in case this is useful to someone who finds this thread:
The following works well for me.
internal static byte[] AesEncryptor(byte[] key, byte[] iv, byte[] payload)
{
using (var aesAlg = Aes.Create())
{
aesAlg.Mode = CipherMode.CBC;
aesAlg.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;
var encryptor = aesAlg.CreateEncryptor(key, iv);
var encrypted = encryptor.TransformFinalBlock(payload, 0, payload.Length);
return iv.Concat(encrypted).ToArray();
}
}
and to decrypt:
internal static byte[] AesDecryptor(byte[] key, byte[] iv, byte[] payload)
{
using (var aesAlg = Aes.Create())
{
aesAlg.Mode = CipherMode.CBC;
aesAlg.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;
var decryptor = aesAlg.CreateDecryptor(aesAlg.Key, aesAlg.IV);
return decryptor.TransformFinalBlock(payload, 0, payload.Length);
}
}
this works for encrypting/decrypting both fixed length hex strings when decoded from hex to byte[] as well as utf8 variable length strings when decoded using Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes().

C# DES File Decryption Breaking Non-Text Files

I have these two methods which are pretty much copy+pastes from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307010.
When I decrypt the files, if they are any type of text file such as .txt, .xml, .html, etc. I can open them up and everything is fine. Any type of file not just text, such as .exe, .jpg, .pdf, etc. all break when decrypted. Is there anything I am doing wrong? Are these methods using binary to encrypt/decrypt the files? If not is there a way I can make it binary?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
public static void EncryptFile(string sInputFilename,
string sOutputFilename,
string sKey)
{
FileStream fsInput = new FileStream(sInputFilename,
FileMode.Open,
FileAccess.Read);
FileStream fsEncrypted = new FileStream(sOutputFilename,
FileMode.Create,
FileAccess.Write);
DESCryptoServiceProvider DES = new DESCryptoServiceProvider();
DES.Key = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(sKey);
DES.IV = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(sKey);
ICryptoTransform desencrypt = DES.CreateEncryptor();
CryptoStream cryptostream = new CryptoStream(fsEncrypted,
desencrypt,
CryptoStreamMode.Write);
byte[] bytearrayinput = new byte[fsInput.Length];
fsInput.Read(bytearrayinput, 0, bytearrayinput.Length);
cryptostream.Write(bytearrayinput, 0, bytearrayinput.Length);
cryptostream.Close();
fsInput.Close();
fsEncrypted.Close();
}
public static void DecryptFile(string sInputFilename,
string sOutputFilename,
string sKey)
{
DESCryptoServiceProvider DES = new DESCryptoServiceProvider();
//A 64 bit key and IV is required for this provider.
//Set secret key For DES algorithm.
DES.Key = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(sKey);
//Set initialization vector.
DES.IV = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(sKey);
//Create a file stream to read the encrypted file back.
FileStream fsread = new FileStream(sInputFilename,
FileMode.Open,
FileAccess.Read);
//Create a DES decryptor from the DES instance.
ICryptoTransform desdecrypt = DES.CreateDecryptor();
//Create crypto stream set to read and do a
//DES decryption transform on incoming bytes.
CryptoStream cryptostreamDecr = new CryptoStream(fsread,
desdecrypt,
CryptoStreamMode.Read);
//Print the contents of the decrypted file.
StreamWriter fsDecrypted = new StreamWriter(sOutputFilename);
fsDecrypted.Write(new StreamReader(cryptostreamDecr).ReadToEnd());
fsDecrypted.Flush();
fsDecrypted.Close();
fsread.Close();
cryptostreamDecr.Close();
}

I don't know what the guy that wrote that article was smoking, but:
DESCryptoServiceProvider desCrypto =
(DESCryptoServiceProvider)DESCryptoServiceProvider.Create();
return ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(desCrypto.Key);
will not get you a valid key. At least one problem is the fact that the key you use to encrypt is not the same key that you're using to decrypt, because you can't convert bytes to ASCII and back like that.
If you want to treat the key as a string, what you probably want is:
string keyAsString = Convert.ToBase64String(desCrypto.Key);
Then when you want to turn it back into bytes, instead of ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes, you'll do:
byte[] key = Convert.FromBase64String(keyAsString);
EDIT
There's a ton more wrong with that article too. I'd say ignore that one and find a better example.
EDIT
Here's a very clean basic AES working example that I use for my standard encryption needs. Some of the major improvements over the article are:
Proper creation of a key
Current algorithm (AES 256-bit key)
Random IV
Buffered file access instead of reading/writing the entire file in one chunk
Wrapping all the disposable objects in using
Aside from that, it's the same basic idea.
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
namespace ConsoleApplication12
{
class Program
{
private const int KEY_SIZE_BYTES = 32;
private const int IV_SIZE_BYTES = 16;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var rand = new Random();
using (var fs = File.Open(#"C:\temp\input.bin", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None))
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[10000];
for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i)
{
rand.NextBytes(buffer);
fs.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
}
}
string key = GenerateRandomKey();
Encrypt(#"C:\temp\input.bin", #"C:\temp\encrypted.bin", key);
Decrypt(#"C:\temp\encrypted.bin", #"C:\temp\decyrypted.bin", key);
}
static string GenerateRandomKey()
{
byte[] key = new byte[KEY_SIZE_BYTES];
using (var rng = RandomNumberGenerator.Create())
{
rng.GetBytes(key);
}
return Convert.ToBase64String(key);
}
static void Encrypt(string inputFile, string outputFile, string key)
{
const int BUFFER_SIZE = 8192;
byte[] buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
byte[] keyBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(key);
byte[] ivBytes = new byte[IV_SIZE_BYTES];
using (var rng = RandomNumberGenerator.Create())
{
rng.GetBytes(ivBytes);
}
using (var inputStream = File.Open(inputFile, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))
{
using (var outputStream = File.Open(outputFile, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None))
{
outputStream.Write(ivBytes, 0, ivBytes.Length);
using (var cryptoAlgo = Aes.Create())
{
using (var encryptor = cryptoAlgo.CreateEncryptor(keyBytes, ivBytes))
{
using (var cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(outputStream, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
{
int count;
while ((count = inputStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
cryptoStream.Write(buffer, 0, count);
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
static void Decrypt(string inputFile, string outputFile, string key)
{
const int BUFFER_SIZE = 8192;
byte[] buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
byte[] keyBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(key);
byte[] ivBytes = new byte[IV_SIZE_BYTES];
using (var inputStream = File.Open(inputFile, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))
{
inputStream.Read(ivBytes, 0, ivBytes.Length);
using (var outputStream = File.Open(outputFile, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None))
{
using (var cryptoAlgo = Aes.Create())
{
using (var decryptor = cryptoAlgo.CreateDecryptor(keyBytes, ivBytes))
{
using (var cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(inputStream, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read))
{
int count;
while ((count = cryptoStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
outputStream.Write(buffer, 0, count);
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
Because the IV is random, you'll see another small difference in technique. When encrypting the file, you first write the IV to the encrypted file (it's not a secret, so you just write it straight out). When decrypting the file, you read the first few bytes to retrieve the IV, then the rest of the file contains the actual encrypted data. The purpose of a random IV is so the same plaintext file will encrypt into a different encrypted file every time you run it.
The Main method here demonstrates encryption with a random key. If you want to use a password, it's a little more work, but you can implement PBKDF2 with maybe a dozen or so extra lines of code.

Any alternatives for this code to know the byte count?

okay so I have this code for decrypting files
public static byte[] DecryptFile(string inputFile, string skey)
{
RijndaelManaged aes = new RijndaelManaged();
byte[] key = ASCIIEncoding.UTF8.GetBytes(skey);
using (FileStream fsCrypt = new FileStream(inputFile, FileMode.Open))
{
using (CryptoStream cs =
new CryptoStream(fsCrypt, aes.CreateDecryptor(key, key),
CryptoStreamMode.Read))
{
using (BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(cs))
{
byte[] str = reader.ReadBytes(Convert.ToInt32(cs.Length));
reader.Close();
cs.Close();
return (str);
}
}
}
}
}
NOW i've got a problem with it, i can't determine the byte length! I tried
cs.Length
but it says the Stream doesn't support seeking (something like tht)
I also tried counting the bytes of the file by
File.ReadAllBytes(encrypted_file_path).Length
but it says the file is in use...it is indeed in use because of the FileStream fsCrypt
for the meantime I replaced cs.Length with some large integer to make it work..like 1000000..the maximum integer that doesn't cause any exception..it does work that way.

You cannot know the length until after you decrypt the entire file.
Therefore, you need to start with a small array, and make it bigger as it gets full.
The MemoryStream class does just that; you can just cs.CopyTo() into a new MemoryStream and call ToArray().

C# Encryption Algorithms

There are many answers on the internet regarding encryption, but I have been unable to find exactly what I'm looking for: simple strong encryption using the tools that c# provides to encrypt strings and text files.
My main problem is that I don't know how to save the IV into the beginning of the text file or how to create a random IV. I have an example on crypto stream and I have seen an example on DES, but they use the same IV and key and that is (by what I know) not a good thing to do.

You're right, using the same IV is a bad practice, especially if either the Key or IV are hard coded. I'd recommend using the AesManaged class. It uses the AES algorithm, the current standard. Generating an IV is fairly simple:
var aes = new AesManaged(); //Set your KeySize if you will generate a key too.
aes.GenerateIV();
var iv = aes.IV;
That's a simple way of getting a new initialization vector. If your goal is to encrypt a file, you can store the File, but what will you do with the Key? Hard coding it within your application is generally not a very good way of doing it. If your application will be password based, then you can generate the key from Rfc2898DeriveBytes to get a byte array based on a password. This way, your application never knows what the encryption key is.
Here is an example for writing the IV to a file, then the file contents.
using (AesManaged aes = new AesManaged())
{
//Set the Key here.
aes.GenerateIV();
using (var transform = aes.CreateEncryptor())
{
using (var fileStream = new FileStream("C:\\in.txt", FileMode.Open))
{
using (var saveTo = new FileStream("C:\\out.txt", FileMode.Create))
{
using (var cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(saveTo, transform,CryptoStreamMode.Write))
{
var iv = aes.IV;
cryptoStream.Write(iv, 0, iv.Length);
fileStream.CopyTo(cryptoStream);
}
}
}
}
}

see the example on following link, it will create a string encryption with hash, salt and VI key.
https://github.com/salahuddinuk/Encryption-Decryption/blob/master/EncryptDecrypt/Form1.cs
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace EncryptDecrypt
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
static readonly string PasswordHash = "P!!Sw0rd~";
static readonly string SaltKey = "Sa~LT~KEY";
static readonly string VIKey = "#1B2c3D4#e5F6<7H8<.";
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void btn_Process_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
try
{
lbl_Error.Text = "";
if (chb_Decrypt.Checked == true)
txt_Result.Text = Decrypt(txt_Value.Text);
else
txt_Result.Text = Encrypt(txt_Value.Text);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
lbl_Error.Text = ex.Message;
}
}
public static string Encrypt(string plainText)
{
byte[] plainTextBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(plainText);
byte[] keyBytes = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes(PasswordHash, Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(SaltKey)).GetBytes(256 / 8);
var symmetricKey = new RijndaelManaged() { Mode = CipherMode.CBC, Padding = PaddingMode.Zeros };
var encryptor = symmetricKey.CreateEncryptor(keyBytes, Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(VIKey));
byte[] cipherTextBytes;
using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(memoryStream, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
{
cryptoStream.Write(plainTextBytes, 0, plainTextBytes.Length);
cryptoStream.FlushFinalBlock();
cipherTextBytes = memoryStream.ToArray();
cryptoStream.Close();
}
memoryStream.Close();
}
return Convert.ToBase64String(cipherTextBytes);
}
public static string Decrypt(string encryptedText)
{
byte[] cipherTextBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(encryptedText);
byte[] keyBytes = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes(PasswordHash, Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(SaltKey)).GetBytes(256 / 8);
var symmetricKey = new RijndaelManaged() { Mode = CipherMode.CBC, Padding = PaddingMode.None };
var decryptor = symmetricKey.CreateDecryptor(keyBytes, Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(VIKey));
var memoryStream = new MemoryStream(cipherTextBytes);
var cryptoStream = new CryptoStream(memoryStream, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read);
byte[] plainTextBytes = new byte[cipherTextBytes.Length];
int decryptedByteCount = cryptoStream.Read(plainTextBytes, 0, plainTextBytes.Length);
memoryStream.Close();
cryptoStream.Close();
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(plainTextBytes, 0, decryptedByteCount).TrimEnd("\0".ToCharArray());
}
}
}

Nowadays, AesGcm would be an appropriate class and algorithm to use. Examples code for it is easy enough to find, and its API is fairly straightforward.
To generate the IV/nonce, use RandomNumberGenerator.Fill to populate an array of the correct size, which is 12 bytes (96 bits) for AES-GCM. RandomNumberGenerator is the cryptographically-secure one.
As for writing the IV to the file, that is up to you. Are you writing to a file stream? Then start by writing the IV, and then proceed to write the ciphertext. For AES-GCM, we would also write the tag, which will give us not just encryption, but authenticated encryption, i.e. on decryption we can confirm that the ciphertext has not been tampered with.
When reading such a file back in, we read each of the components separately - IV, ciphertext, and tag. Since you know how you wrote them, you know how to read them. For example, x bytes IV, then y bytes tag, then the remaining bytes ciphertext, if that is how you wrote the data to the file.
Pass the components to AesGcm.Decrypt and voila.

Padding invalid when decrypting stream

I am trying to encrypt a stream (coming from a file) using AesManaged. I can encrypt the file without error, but on decryption I get the following CryptographicException:
Padding is invalid and cannot be
removed.
The exception is raised when the CryptoStream is being disposed. I use the following to encrypt the input data:
public byte[] Encrypt(Stream plain)
{
// Create a decrytor to perform the stream transform.
using( var msEncrypt = new MemoryStream() )
{
using (ICryptoTransform encryptor = _myAes.CreateEncryptor(_myAes.Key, _myAes.IV))
using (CryptoStream csEncrypt = new CryptoStream(msEncrypt, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
using (BinaryWriter swEncrypt = new BinaryWriter(csEncrypt))
{
int buf_size = 32768;
byte[] buffer = new byte[buf_size];
int read = 0;
while ((read = plain.Read(buffer, 0, buf_size)) > 0)
{
swEncrypt.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
}
return msEncrypt.ToArray();
}
}
And this to decrypt the data:
public byte[] Decrypt(Stream cipherText)
{
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
// Create a decrytor to perform the stream transform.
using (ICryptoTransform decryptor = _myAes.CreateDecryptor(_myAes.Key, _myAes.IV))
using (CryptoStream csDecrypt = new CryptoStream(ms, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
using (BinaryWriter swDecrypt = new BinaryWriter(csDecrypt))
{
int buf_size = 32768;
byte[] buffer = new byte[buf_size];
int read = 0;
while ((read = cipherText.Read(buffer, 0, buf_size)) > 0)
{
swDecrypt.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
}
return ms.ToArray();
}
}
Any ideas about why this exception is coming up would be great. Thanks
UPDATE
Here is where the Aes object was created, note the Key and IV are just set to their current values temporarily, it is not the real key that will be used:
private Crypto()
{
_myAes = new AesManaged();
_myAes.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;
_myAes.KeySize = 128;
_myAes.Key = Enumerable.Repeat((byte)'B', 128 / 8).ToArray();
_myAes.IV = Enumerable.Repeat((byte)'C', 128 / 8).ToArray();
}

In the past I got this exception when I tried to decrypt a buffer whose length was not a multiple of 16 bytes.
Did you try calling Flush on the CryptoStream before it is disposed? Possibly, if it isn't flushed then it ends up trying to decrypt a buffer with a non-aligned length.
And another note - I don't know if this will solve your problem, but when you create a CryptoStream in order to decrypt the buffer, shouldn't you be using CryptoStreamMode.Read instead of CryptoStreamMode.Write?

Ensure that you finish the CryptoStream cleanly on the write side. You may need to call FlushFinalBlock() to ensure that the end-of-stream padding is written through -- otherwise, you are likely to end up missing the final block of the stream, which will result in an invalid padding exception.

I don't know if it is still relevant to post something after 4 years but, you should try to set padding to none. I got the same problem with 3DES and the issue got solved with that (but make sure the length of data to be decrypted is correct...)
private Crypto()
{
_myAes = new AesManaged();
_myAes.Padding = PaddingMode.none; //rather than _myAes.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;
_myAes.KeySize = 128;
_myAes.Key = Enumerable.Repeat((byte)'B', 128 / 8).ToArray();
_myAes.IV = Enumerable.Repeat((byte)'C', 128 / 8).ToArray();
}