How to decrypt an AES-256-CBC encrypted string

Question

I\'m new to C# and I really need help. I need to encrypt/decrypt a string with AES-256-CBC in C#, I found this to encrypt a string:

    public static string          


        

Answer 1

Looking at your encryption, something like this should do it, passing the resulting string from your encryption in should give the original string back;

// Decrypt a string into a string using a key and an IV 
public static string Decrypt(string cipherData, string keyString, string ivString)
{
    byte[] key = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(keyString);
    byte[] iv  = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(ivString);

    try
    {
        using (var rijndaelManaged =
               new RijndaelManaged {Key = key, IV = iv, Mode = CipherMode.CBC})
        using (var memoryStream = 
               new MemoryStream(Convert.FromBase64String(cipherData)))
        using (var cryptoStream =
               new CryptoStream(memoryStream,
                   rijndaelManaged.CreateDecryptor(key, iv),
                   CryptoStreamMode.Read))
        {
            return new StreamReader(cryptoStream).ReadToEnd();
        }
    }
    catch (CryptographicException e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("A Cryptographic error occurred: {0}", e.Message);
        return null;
    }
    // You may want to catch more exceptions here...
}

A small note; you're getting the key using UTF8 encoding from the key string, UTF8 encoding may give you multiple bytes back for international characters, which may give a key or IV of the wrong length for encryption/decryption. Also, using the small range of passwords/keys with 8 characters and printable characters will not give you very secure encryption, you may want to run the string though SHA1 or similar before using it as a key (which will sadly make it incompatible with the current encryption)