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how to decrypt SHA512 hash value to an actual string in c# [duplicate]

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Vb.net Decrypt sha512 hash
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Closed 8 years ago.
I encrypt the password by following code
HashAlgorithm hashAlgorithm = null;
hashAlgorithm = new SHA512CryptoServiceProvider();
try
{
byte[] byteValue = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(source);
byte[] hashValue = hashAlgorithm.ComputeHash(byteValue);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i <= hashValue.Length - 1; i++)
{
sb.AppendFormat("{0:x2}", hashValue[i]);
}
return Convert.ToString(sb);
}
catch
{
throw;
}
after that I saved it in database.
now I want to retrieve actual password by decrypting it. please help me

You hash a password and you don't encrypt it. That being said you cannot decrypt it.
Taken from here
Encryption transforms data into another format in such a way that only
specific individual(s) can reverse the transformation. It uses a key,
which is kept secret, in conjunction with the plaintext and the
algorithm, in order to perform the encryption operation. As such, the
ciphertext, algorithm, and key are all required to return to the
plaintext.
while
Hashing serves the purpose of ensuring integrity, i.e. making it so
that if something is changed you can know that it’s changed.
Technically, hashing takes arbitrary input and produce a fixed-length
string that has the following attributes:
The same input will always produce the same output.
Multiple disparate inputs should not produce the same output.
It should not be possible to go from the output to the input.
Any modification of a given input should result in drastic change to the hash.
Hashing is used in
conjunction with authentication to produce strong evidence that a
given message has not been modified. This is accomplished by taking a
given input, encrypting it with a given key, hashing it, and then
encrypting the key with with the recipient’s public key and signing
the hash with the sender’s private key.
then what can I use with which I can convert output to input?
You should decrypt your data and not hash them. Encrypting and Decrypting data is a big subject. A good starting point is to read this. Generally, you have two types of encryoption, symmetric and assymmetric. So initially, read about them and then choose the one you think is suits your needs. Then try to implement it. You will make use of algorithms that are already implemented in .NET and can be used instantiating objects of the corresponding classes and calling specific methods.
However, I have to make a note here. Usually, we hash the passwords and we don't encrypt them. This is more secure. Taken from here:
Though hashing and encryption both provide valuable capabilities, for
the vast majority of situations, there is only one right option for
storing user passwords for an online application: hashing. This is a
one-way function in which a hashed value cannot be reversed to obtain
the original input value (i.e., the password). Symmetric encryption is
based on the use of an encryption key and is a reversible operation.
Anyone possessing the key can decrypt an encrypted value to obtain the
original value.

RSA private key encryption

Is there any way to perform private key encryption in C#?
I know about the standard RSACryptoServiceProvider in System.Security.Cryptography, but these classes provide only public key encryption and private key decryption. Also, they provide digital signature functionality, which uses internally private key encryption, but there are not any publicly accessible functions to perform private key encryption and public key decryption.
I've found this article on codeproject, which is a very good start point for performing this kind of encryption, however, I was looking for some ready-to-use code, as the code in the article can hardly encrypt arbitrary-long byte arrays containing random values (that means any values, including zeroes).
Do you know some good components (preferably free) to perform private key encryption?
I use .NET 3.5.
Note: I know this is generally considered as bad way of using asymmetric encryption (encrypting using private key and decrypting using public key), but I just need to use it that way.
Additional Explanation
Consider you have
var bytes = new byte[30] { /* ... */ };
and you want to use 2048bit RSA to ensure no one have changed anything in this array.
Normally, you would use digital signature (ie. RIPEMD160), which you then attach to the original bytes and send over to the receiver.
So, you have 30 bytes of original data, and additional 256 bytes of digital signature (because it is a 2048bit RSA), which is overall of 286 bytes. Hovewer, only 160 bits of that 256 bytes are actually hash, so there is exactly 1888 bits (236 bytes) unused.
So, my idea was this:
Take the 30 bytes of original data, attach to it the hash (20 bytes), and now encrypt these 50 bytes. You get 256 bytes long message, which is much shorter than 286 bytes, because "you were able to push the actual data inside the digital signature".
ECDSA Resources
MSDN
Eggheadcafe.com
c-plusplus.de
MSDN Blog
Wiki
DSA Resources
CodeProject
MSDN 1
MSDN 2
MSDN 3
Final Solution
If anyone is interested how I've solved this problem, I'm going to use 1024bit DSA and SHA1, which is widely supported on many different versions of Windows (Windows 2000 and newer), security is good enough (I'm not signing orders, I just need to ensure that some child can't crack the signature on his iPhone (:-D)), and the signature size is only 40 bytes long.

What you are trying to design is known as a "Signature scheme with message recovery".
Designing a new signature scheme is hard. Designing a new signature scheme with message recovery is harder. I don't know all the details about your design, but there is a good chance that it is susceptible to a chosen message attack.
One proposal for signature schemes with message recovery is RSA PSS-R. But unfortunately, this proposal is covered with a patent.
The IEEE P1363 standarization group, once discussed the addition of signature schemes with message recovery. However, I'm not sure about the current state of this effort, but it might be worth checking out.

Your Public key is a sub-set of your private key. You can use your private key as a public key as it will only use the components of the full key it requires.
In .NET both your private & public keys are stored in the RSAParameters struct. The struct contains fields for:
D
DP
DQ
Exponent
InverseQ
Modulus
P
Q

If you're at the point where the data is so small that the digital signature is huge in comparison, then you have excess signature. The solution isn't to roll your own algorithm, but to cut down what's there. You definitely don't want to try to combine a key with the hash in an amateurish way: this has been broken already, which is why we have HMAC's.
So here's the basic idea:
Create a session key using a cryptographically strong RNG.
Transmit it via PKE.
Use the session key to generate an HMAC-SHA1 (or HMAC-RIPEMD160, or whatever).
If the size of the hash is absurdly large for the given data, cut it in half by XORing the top with the bottom. Repeat as needed.
Send the data and the (possibly cut-down) hash.
The receiver uses the data and the session key to regenerate the hash and then compares it with the one transmitted (possibly after first cutting it down.)
Change session keys often.
This is a compromise between the insanity of rolling your own system and using an ill-fitting one.
I'm wide open to constructive criticism...

I get it now, after reading the comments.
The answer is: don't do it.
Cryptographic signature algorithms are not algorithms from which you can pick and choose - or modify - steps. In particular, supposing a signature sig looks something like encrypt(hash), orig + sig is not the same as encrypt(orig + hash). Further, even outdated signature algorithms like PKCS v1.5 are not as simple as encrypt(hash) in the first place.
A technique like the one you describe sacrifices security for the sake of cleverness. If you don't have the bandwidth for a 256 byte signature, then you need one of:
a different algorithm,
more bandwidth, or
a smaller key.
And if you go with (1), please be sure it's not an algorithm you made up! The simple fact is that crypto is hard.

How to create Encryption Key for Encryption Algorithms?

I want to use encryption algorithm available in .Net Security namespace, however I am trying to understand how to generate the key, for example AES algorithm needs 256 bits, that 16 bytes key, and some initialization vector, which is also few bytes.
Can I use any combination of values in my Key and IV? e.g. all zeros in Key and IV are valid or not? I know the detail of algorithm which does lots of xors, so zero wont serve any good, but are there any restrictions by these algorithms?
Or Do I have to generate the key using some program and save it permanently somewhere?
I want to store data in database after encryption, the secure profile data like username, password, phone number etc, and the key will be available to database user mentioned in connection string only, and to the administrator.

You really ought to do this the correct way :)
1) Use a securely generated random IV
2) Use a securely generated random key
3) Don't use ECB mode - EVER
AesManaged aes = new AesManaged();
aes.GenerateKey();
aes.GenerateIV();
The code above will correctly and securely generate a random IV and random key for you.

Sounds like you need to read into the Rfc2898DeriveBytes class.
Rfc2898DeriveBytes.GetBytes();
It has a method(above) that allows you to tailor the size of byte arrays that are fed into the .Key and .IV properties on a symmetric encryption algorithm, simply by feeding an int value. The MS official 70-536 book suggests doing this pro-grammatically by dividing the KeySize property / 8.
I.e TripleDes or AESManaged. Whatever you use, the algorithm itself will have some pre-reqs that will need meeting first. I.e satisfying the key size conditions. The RunTime will automatically fill the properties and fields and etc the best and most strongest values for you. But the IV and Key needs to come from you. This how you can do the following:
RijndaelManaged myAlg = new RiRijndaelManaged();
byte[] salt = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("Some salt value");
Rfc2898DeriveBytes key = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes("some password", salt);
myAlg.Key = key.GetBytes( myAlg.KeySize / 8);
myAlg.IV = key.GetBytes( myAlg.BlockSize / 8);
// myAld should now fully set-up.
Above you can see what I mean by doing it pro-grammatically, as it should pretty much
do it all for you, without you even really having to bat an eye-lid as to meeting it's pre-reqs.
The Microsoft 70-536 book states that the .Key properties expect the byte arrays you supply
to them in bytes and not bits. The RFC class works in bytes where as an algorithms KeySize property works in bits. 1 byte = 8 bits. Can you see where this is going ... ?
This should give you an idea as to why the above sample peice of code is done the way it is! I studied it and it makes pretty darn good sense to me!
The above answer should allow you to create your algorithm object with supplied password and a static salt value that can be hard code at both ends. Only thing you need to do is worry about how you going to make sure that the byte arrays stored at .Key and .IV are safely transported to a recipient so that can successfully decrypt the message you encrypted. By safely reconstructing the same algorithm object.
OBTW:
AESManaged has a keysize req': 128Bits = 16 Bytes !!!
(8*8 = 64, 64Bit / 8bits per Byte = 8 Bytes) Therefore
64*2 = 128Bit, 8*2, ==> 16bytes key size !
256Bit = 32Bytes !!!!
According to the 70-536 official training kit book, Aes is limited to having keysize of 128bits in size. 256bits,192 and 128 key size for example can be used with the Rijndael class.
You could on the other hand completely forget all that crap and simply use .GenerateKey and GenerateIV methods instead to save you all the hassle of sorting out a pre-shared and agreed password and static salt values. Your only concern is figuring out a way of storing and retrieving the key and IV byte arrays. Binary Formatter? .

If you are using encryption to exchange data then you will need a key exchange protocol, but you don't make one yourself instead use one off-the-shelf like TLS or SSL.
If you use encryption to store data then you generate the IV using CryptGenRandom (or its .net equivalent RandomNumberGenerator.GetBytes) and save it along the document (in clear, no need to protect the IV). You never write down the key, the key is provided by the user. Usualy you derive the key from a password phrase using CryptDeriveKey, or its .Net equivalent PasswordDeriveKey.CryptDeriveKey.
Update
To store a secret in the database that is available only to the user and an administrator you need to use 3 keys:
one to encrypt the data with (call it the DK key)
one user key to encrypt the DK key (call it UK)
one administrator key to encrypt the DK key (call it AK)
In theory you encrypt the data with DK and then encrypt the DK with UK and save it, and encrypt the DK with AK and save it. This way the user can use again the UK to decrypt the DK and then decrypt the data, and the administrator can use the AK to decrypt the DK and then decrypt the data. The big problem is the fact that the system is always automated, so the system needs access to the administrator's key which means is not truly a persnal key of the administrator, but instead is a system key (it cannot be used for purposes of non-repudiation for instance).
As a heads up, knowledge of what IV is or how to use AES from C# and how cryptography algorithm work will get you exactly 0 (zero) traction in solving this kind of problems. The issue is never what IV and key to use, the issue is always key provisioning. For actual crypto operations, just use the built-in support from the database, see Cryptography in SQL Server. I can easily argue that the only facility you need is TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) to protect against accidental loss of media.

Generate a random letters / hex code in a specific length.
This function (taken from here) return a random key in a specific length:
private static string CreateSalt(int size)
{
//Generate a cryptographic random number.
RNGCryptoServiceProvider rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();
byte[] buff = new byte[size];
rng.GetBytes(buff);
// Return a Base64 string representation of the random number.
return Convert.ToBase64String(buff);
}

Use System.Security.Cryptography.RandomNumberGenerator to generate random bytes:
var rnd = new System.Security.Cryptography.RandomNumberGenerator.Create();
var key = new byte[50];
rnd.GetBytes(key);

It really depends on what you ned to do with the key.
If the key is to be generated by the computer (and can be any random value) I generally take a SHA256 of a couple GUIDs. This is about as random as you're going to get without a hardware random number generator.
You can use keys with all 0s but obviously it won't be very secure.

Encryption/Encoding Algorithm

I have an unencrypted/unencoded string - "565040574". I also have the encrypted/encoded string for this string - "BSubW2AUWrSCL7dk9ucoiA==".
It looks like this string has been Base64ed after encryption, but I don't know which encryption algorithm has been used. If I convert "BSubW2AUWrSCL7dk9ucoiA==" string to bytes using Convert.FromBase64String("BSubW2AUWrSCL7dk9ucoiA=="), I get 16 bytes.
Is there anything using which I can know what type of encryption has been used to encrypt the "565040574" to "BSubW2AUWrSCL7dk9ucoiA=="?

No, there is nothing to tell you how it was encrypted. If you don't have the key to decrypt it then you will be out of luck anyway.
If the plan was to save this to a file or send it in email then it would be base-64 encoded, so that was a good guess.
You may be able to narrow down what it is not by looking at the fact that you have 7 bytes of padding perhaps, but whether it was IDEA or Blowfish or AES, there is no way to know.

Looking at it, from the top of my head I would say AES and more specifically Rijndael.
EDIT:
Just to add, as I said in my comment, without the key you will never know what this is. I am taking it on a best guess scenario, also based on implementations that could be termed "more common", which could also be a complete oversight from me.
Remember that if you can ever outright say what algorithm a ciphertext is in, never, ever use that algorithm.

What can you tell from the data you have? Well, the most concrete bit of information you have is that 9 bytes of cleartext encrypts to 16 bytes of ciphertext. Since it is unlikely that a data compression algorithm is being used on such a small chunk of data, this means we can make an educated guess that:
It is encrypted with a block cipher, with a block size <= 128 bits.
The encryption mode is ECB, since there is no room for an IV.

C# Reading back encrypted passwords

I'm using the code below to save a password to the registry, how do I convert it back? The code below isn't mine but it encrypts well.
Thanks
using System.Security.Cryptography;
public static string EncodePasswordToBase64(string password)
{ byte[] bytes = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(password);
byte[] dst = new byte[bytes.Length];
byte[] inArray = HashAlgorithm.Create("SHA1").ComputeHash(dst);
return Convert.ToBase64String(inArray);
}

SHA1 is a hash algorithm, not an encryption algorithm. A hash algorithm is a one-way function which transforms data into a hash of that data, but the original data cannot be gotten back from the hash. An encryption algorithm is a two-way function which transforms data into encrypted data, and the encrypted data can then be transformed back into the original data.

To securely store a password so that it can be read back, use the ProtectedData class.
public static string ProtectPassword(string password)
{
byte[] bytes = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(password);
byte[] protectedPassword = ProtectedData.Protect(bytes, null, DataProtectionScope.CurrentUser);
return Convert.ToBase64String(protectedPassword);
}
public static string UnprotectPassword(string protectedPassword)
{
byte[] bytes = Convert.FromBase64String(protectedPassword);
byte[] password = ProtectedData.Unprotect(bytes, null, DataProtectionScope.CurrentUser);
return Encoding.Unicode.GetString(password);
}

Take whatever the user enters as a password to gain access to the system, encrypt it the same way and then compare the encrypted values, that's the normal approach. I'm pretty sure that SHA1 is a trapdoor encryption, i.e. can't be back-tracked.

You don't.
SHA1 is a hash, not encryption. It is a one-way operation; conversion back is not possible.
(Ok this is not strictly true; if you have a table of possible SHA1 values and plain text values, a rainbow table then you might be luck)
Also you should be salting your hashes, because you are, right now, vulnerable to rainbow table attacks. Jeff talks about this a little more on his blog

Okay, so I know this isn't answering your specific Q, but why do you want to convert it back?
If it's to compare in order to provide authentication, the standard approach is to encrypt this text ALSO, and compare the stored password to the supplied password.
This is more secure as it means that the original password never needs to be decrypted.

I think one of the points of using hashes is that they can't be computed back.
As someone else said, calculate the hash from the user's password and compare to the stored hash value.

In order to use the System.Security.Cryptography.ProtectedData class, you must add a reference to System.Security to your project.
(Right mouse click on the References folder, choose "Add Reference...", find System.Security on the .NET Tab)

Um, just curious but wouldn't that return the same hash for all passwords of the same length?

Using your own code snippet above, what you want to do is call that method when the user initially chooses a password - but add to the password what is called a salt somewhere in the password string (usually at the beginning or end). Then, when the user is attempting to authenticate later, they enter their password, you run that one along with the hash through this same method and if the two hashes are equal, it's a statistically excellent chance the passwords are equal and valid.
This being said, SHA1 is known to have weaknesses and you should choose a stronger algorithm. If you want to stay in the SHA family, SHA512 is pretty good.

You want to use encryption not hashing. SHA is fine but use the encryption methods for it. The problem with encryption is always where to put the key for it. You didn't mention whether this was a workstation or server you were doing this on. On a server, I find it better to just use ACL's to restrict access to the reg key. Admins can usually access the encryption key anyway...you have to have some trust somewhere. On a workstation then you can go with encryption and store the key in code or use a certificate and restrict access to it at least in a corp environment...not for sale software).
You can use the ProtectedData class but be aware that it uses user profiles for its key usage and as such you have to make sure you are impersonating the user who has the profile with the key you need. This may or may not be trivial and may or may not cause headaches and security issues.

I noticed the recent addition of the XMLEncryptedData class. For encrypting data to an XML file, is the XMLEncryptedData method more desirable than the DPAPI method?