[c#] Encrypt and decrypt a string in C#?

BouncyCastle is a great Crypto library for .NET, it's available as a Nuget package for install into your projects. I like it a lot more than what's currently available in the System.Security.Cryptography library. It gives you a lot more options in terms of available algorithms, and provides more modes for those algorithms.

This is an example of an implementation of TwoFish, which was written by Bruce Schneier (hero to all us paranoid people out there). It's a symmetric algorithm like the Rijndael (aka AES). It was one of the three finalists for the AES standard and sibling to another famous algorithm written by Bruce Schneier called BlowFish.

First thing with bouncycastle is to create an encryptor class, this will make it easier to implement other block ciphers within the library. The following encryptor class takes in a generic argument T where T implements IBlockCipher and has a default constructor.

UPDATE: Due to popular demand I have decided to implement generating a random IV as well as include an HMAC into this class. Although from a style perspective this goes against the SOLID principle of single responsibility, because of the nature of what this class does I reniged. This class will now take two generic parameters, one for the cipher and one for the digest. It automatically generates the IV using RNGCryptoServiceProvider to provide good RNG entropy, and allows you to use whatever digest algorithm you want from BouncyCastle to generate the MAC.

using System;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Crypto;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Crypto.Macs;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Crypto.Modes;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Crypto.Paddings;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Crypto.Parameters;

public sealed class Encryptor<TBlockCipher, TDigest>
    where TBlockCipher : IBlockCipher, new()
    where TDigest : IDigest, new()
{
    private Encoding encoding;

    private IBlockCipher blockCipher;

    private BufferedBlockCipher cipher;

    private HMac mac;

    private byte[] key;

    public Encryptor(Encoding encoding, byte[] key, byte[] macKey)
    {
        this.encoding = encoding;
        this.key = key;
        this.Init(key, macKey, new Pkcs7Padding());
    }

    public Encryptor(Encoding encoding, byte[] key, byte[] macKey, IBlockCipherPadding padding)
    {
        this.encoding = encoding;
        this.key = key;
        this.Init(key, macKey, padding);
    }

    private void Init(byte[] key, byte[] macKey, IBlockCipherPadding padding)
    {
        this.blockCipher = new CbcBlockCipher(new TBlockCipher());
        this.cipher = new PaddedBufferedBlockCipher(this.blockCipher, padding);
        this.mac = new HMac(new TDigest());
        this.mac.Init(new KeyParameter(macKey));
    }

    public string Encrypt(string plain)
    {
        return Convert.ToBase64String(EncryptBytes(plain));
    }

    public byte[] EncryptBytes(string plain)
    {
        byte[] input = this.encoding.GetBytes(plain);

        var iv = this.GenerateIV();

        var cipher = this.BouncyCastleCrypto(true, input, new ParametersWithIV(new KeyParameter(key), iv));
        byte[] message = CombineArrays(iv, cipher);

        this.mac.Reset();
        this.mac.BlockUpdate(message, 0, message.Length);
        byte[] digest = new byte[this.mac.GetUnderlyingDigest().GetDigestSize()];
        this.mac.DoFinal(digest, 0);

        var result = CombineArrays(digest, message);
        return result;
    }

    public byte[] DecryptBytes(byte[] bytes)
    {
        // split the digest into component parts
        var digest = new byte[this.mac.GetUnderlyingDigest().GetDigestSize()];
        var message = new byte[bytes.Length - digest.Length];
        var iv = new byte[this.blockCipher.GetBlockSize()];
        var cipher = new byte[message.Length - iv.Length];

        Buffer.BlockCopy(bytes, 0, digest, 0, digest.Length);
        Buffer.BlockCopy(bytes, digest.Length, message, 0, message.Length);
        if (!IsValidHMac(digest, message))
        {
            throw new CryptoException();
        }

        Buffer.BlockCopy(message, 0, iv, 0, iv.Length);
        Buffer.BlockCopy(message, iv.Length, cipher, 0, cipher.Length);

        byte[] result = this.BouncyCastleCrypto(false, cipher, new ParametersWithIV(new KeyParameter(key), iv));
        return result;
    }

    public string Decrypt(byte[] bytes)
    {
        return this.encoding.GetString(DecryptBytes(bytes));
    }

    public string Decrypt(string cipher)
    {
        return this.Decrypt(Convert.FromBase64String(cipher));
    }

    private bool IsValidHMac(byte[] digest, byte[] message)
    {
        this.mac.Reset();
        this.mac.BlockUpdate(message, 0, message.Length);
        byte[] computed = new byte[this.mac.GetUnderlyingDigest().GetDigestSize()];
        this.mac.DoFinal(computed, 0);

        return AreEqual(digest,computed);
    }

    private static bool AreEqual(byte [] digest, byte[] computed)
    {
        if(digest.Length != computed.Length)
        {
            return false;
        }

        int result = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < digest.Length; i++)
        {
            // compute equality of all bytes before returning.
            //   helps prevent timing attacks: 
            //   https://codahale.com/a-lesson-in-timing-attacks/
            result |= digest[i] ^ computed[i];
        }

        return result == 0;
    }

    private byte[] BouncyCastleCrypto(bool forEncrypt, byte[] input, ICipherParameters parameters)
    {
        try
        {
            cipher.Init(forEncrypt, parameters);

            return this.cipher.DoFinal(input);
        }
        catch (CryptoException)
        {
            throw;
        }
    }

    private byte[] GenerateIV()
    {
        using (var provider = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider())
        {
            // 1st block
            byte[] result = new byte[this.blockCipher.GetBlockSize()];
            provider.GetBytes(result);

            return result;
        }
    }

    private static byte[] CombineArrays(byte[] source1, byte[] source2)
    {
        byte[] result = new byte[source1.Length + source2.Length];
        Buffer.BlockCopy(source1, 0, result, 0, source1.Length);
        Buffer.BlockCopy(source2, 0, result, source1.Length, source2.Length);

        return result;
    }
}

Next just call the encrypt and decrypt methods on the new class, here's the example using twofish:

var encrypt = new Encryptor<TwofishEngine, Sha1Digest>(Encoding.UTF8, key, hmacKey);

string cipher = encrypt.Encrypt("TEST");   
string plainText = encrypt.Decrypt(cipher);

It's just as easy to substitute another block cipher like TripleDES:

var des = new Encryptor<DesEdeEngine, Sha1Digest>(Encoding.UTF8, key, hmacKey);

string cipher = des.Encrypt("TEST");
string plainText = des.Decrypt(cipher);

Finally if you want to use AES with SHA256 HMAC you can do the following:

var aes = new Encryptor<AesEngine, Sha256Digest>(Encoding.UTF8, key, hmacKey);

cipher = aes.Encrypt("TEST");
plainText = aes.Decrypt(cipher);

The hardest part about encryption actually deals with the keys and not the algorithms. You'll have to think about where you store your keys, and if you have to, how you exchange them. These algorithms have all withstood the test of time, and are extremely hard to break. Someone who wants to steal information from you isn't going to spend eternity doing cryptanalysis on your messages, they're going to try to figure out what or where your key is. So #1 choose your keys wisely, #2 store them in a safe place, if you use a web.config and IIS then you can encrypt parts of the the web.config, and finally if you have to exchange keys make sure that your protocol for exchanging the key is secure.

Update 2 Changed compare method to mitigate against timing attacks. See more info here http://codahale.com/a-lesson-in-timing-attacks/ . Also updated to default to PKCS7 padding and added new constructor to allow end user the ability to choose which padding they would like to use. Thanks @CodesInChaos for the suggestions.