ObjectInputStream with CipherInputStream freezing, hanging

Question

I'm programming client-server based Java application and I've got a problem, because it hangs when constructing ObjectInputStream both in client and server.

Client:

Socket socket = new Socket("localhost", 9999);

outCiph = new CipherOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream(), AES.getEncryptCipher("key"));
out = new ObjectOutputStream(outCiph);
inCiph = new CipherInputStream(socket.getInputStream(), AES.getDecryptCipher("key"));
in = new ObjectInputStream(inCiph);

try
{
String text = "test!";

out.writeObject(text);
out.flush();

if (out != null)
out.close();

if (in != null)
in.close();
}
catch (IOException ex)
{
System.err.println(ex.toString());
}

Server:

ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket(9999);
Socket socket = serverSocket.accept();

outCiph = new CipherOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream(), AES.getEncryptCipher("key"));
out = new ObjectOutputStream(outCiph);
inCiph = new CipherInputStream(socket.getInputStream(), AES.getDecryptCipher("key"));
in = new ObjectInputStream(inCiph);

try
{
String rec = (String) in.readObject();
System.out.println("Received from client: " + rec);

if (out != null)
out.close();

if (in != null)
in.close();

}
catch (IOException ex)
{
System.err.println(ex.toString() + " in start()");
}
catch (ClassNotFoundException ex)
{
System.err.println(ex.toString());
}

AES:

// I'm not author of generateKey method so I've no idea if is it correct
private static byte[] generateKey(String pass) throws UnsupportedEncodingException, NoSuchAlgorithmException
{
MessageDigest sha = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-256");
byte[] passBytes = pass.getBytes("ASCII");
byte[] sha256Bytes = sha.digest(passBytes);


byte[] key = new byte[16];
int j = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < sha256Bytes.length; i++)
{
    if (i % 2 == 0)
    {
    key[j] = sha256Bytes[i];
    j++;
    }
}
return key;
}

public static Cipher getEncryptCipher(String pass)
{
try
{
    SecretKeySpec skeySpec = new SecretKeySpec(generateKey(pass), "AES");
    Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
    cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, skeySpec);
    return cipher;
}
catch (Exception ex) // just for clarity
{
    Logger.getLogger(AES.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
}
return null;
}

public static Cipher getDecryptCipher(String pass)
{
try
{
    SecretKeySpec skeySpec = new SecretKeySpec(generateKey(pass), "AES");
    Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
    cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, skeySpec);
    return cipher;
}
catch (Exception ex) // just for clarity
{
    Logger.getLogger(AES.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
}
return null;
}

When I don't use CipherInput/OutputStream everything works fine so the problem is somehow related with CipherInput/OutputStream.

Answer 1

You need to create the ObjectInputStream only after you've send all the information over, because the constructor of ObjectInputStream blocks because it needs to read the header.

Normally, all the bytes would have been written by the ObjectOutputStream, but now the CipherOutputStream is waiting until it has a full 16 byte block (in the case of AES) before it sends the (last part of the) header over. Maybe AES in stream cipher mode (CTR or GCM) would be more useful here as it uses per byte encryption, and would be able to directly send each byte.