I just want to add that if you want to somehow store the encrypted byte array as String and then retrieve it and decrypt it (often for obfuscation of database values) you can use this approach:
import java.security.Key;
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
public class StrongAES
{
public void run()
{
try
{
String text = "Hello World";
String key = "Bar12345Bar12345"; // 128 bit key
// Create key and cipher
Key aesKey = new SecretKeySpec(key.getBytes(), "AES");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
// encrypt the text
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, aesKey);
byte[] encrypted = cipher.doFinal(text.getBytes());
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (byte b: encrypted) {
sb.append((char)b);
}
// the encrypted String
String enc = sb.toString();
System.out.println("encrypted:" + enc);
// now convert the string to byte array
// for decryption
byte[] bb = new byte[enc.length()];
for (int i=0; i<enc.length(); i++) {
bb[i] = (byte) enc.charAt(i);
}
// decrypt the text
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, aesKey);
String decrypted = new String(cipher.doFinal(bb));
System.err.println("decrypted:" + decrypted);
}
catch(Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static void main(String[] args)
{
StrongAES app = new StrongAES();
app.run();
}
}