Daniel Ansari’s blog Random software musings

I recently needed to achieve interoperability between ColdFusion and .NET in terms of encryption; in this case, consuming a ColdFusion web service in .NET.

I used the Adobe article, Strong encryption in ColdFusion MX 7, as a resource.

Although the encrypt function takes IVorSalt (initialization vector) as an optional argument, we need to explicitly set this value, as we’ll be using it in .NET to perform the decryption.

Here is the ColdFusion code to perform the encryption:

1. <cfset var key = "dVwuCuBX0LIrSYQbG38f9w==" /><!-- Key in base 64 -->
2. <cfset var algorithm = "AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding" />
3. <cfset var encoding = "Base64" />
4. <cfset var IV = BinaryDecode("7fe8585328e9ac7b28e9ac7b748209b0", "hex") /><!-- Initialization Vector in hexadecimal -->
5. <cfset password = encrypt(password, key, algorithm, encoding, IV) />
6. <cfreturn password />

And here is the VB.NET code to perform the decryption:

1. Dim key() As Byte = Convert.FromBase64String("dVwuCuBX0LIrSYQbG38f9w==")
2. Dim iv() As Byte = New Byte() {&H7F, &HE8, &H58, &H53, &H28, &HE9, &HAC, &H7B, &H28, &HE9, &HAC, &H7B, &H74, &H82, &H9, &HB0}
3.  
4. Dim password As String = DecryptAES(encryptedPassword, key, iv)
5.  
6. Private Function DecryptAES(ByVal cipherText As String, ByVal key() As Byte, ByVal iv() As Byte) As String
7. Dim cipherBytes() As Byte = Convert.FromBase64String(cipherText)
8. Dim ms As MemoryStream = New MemoryStream()
9. Dim alg As Rijndael = Rijndael.Create()
10. alg.Key = key
11. alg.IV = iv
12. Dim cs As CryptoStream = New CryptoStream(ms, alg.CreateDecryptor(), CryptoStreamMode.Write)
13. cs.Write(cipherBytes, 0, cipherBytes.Length)
14. cs.Close()
15. Dim decryptedData() As Byte = ms.ToArray()
16. Dim decryptedText As String = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(decryptedData)
17. Return decryptedText
18. End Function

Just for reference, the corresponding encrypt function in .NET is provided below.

20. Private Function EncryptAES(ByVal clearText As String, ByVal key() As Byte, ByVal iv() As Byte) As String
21. Dim clearBytes() As Byte = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(clearText)
22. Dim ms As MemoryStream = New MemoryStream()
23. Dim alg As Rijndael = Rijndael.Create()
24. alg.Key = key
25. alg.IV = iv
26. Dim cs As CryptoStream = New CryptoStream(ms, alg.CreateEncryptor(), CryptoStreamMode.Write)
27. cs.Write(clearBytes, 0, clearBytes.Length)
28. cs.Close()
29. Dim encryptedData() As Byte = ms.ToArray()
30. Dim encryptedText As String = Convert.ToBase64String(encryptedData)
31. Return encryptedText
32. End Function

In .NET, CipherMode.CBC is the default setting for the Mode (termed Feedback Mode in ColdFusion) property of the Rijndael object, and PaddingMode.PKCS7 is the default Padding value.  Fortunately, PKCS7 is an extension of the PKCS5 padding scheme, so we are able to decipher the ColdFusion-encrypted value in .NET.