Java Security, 2nd Edition

The Cipher Engine

First, we’ll look at the engine that performs encryption within JCE. This engine is called the Cipher class (javax.crypto.Cipher); it provides an interface to encrypt and decrypt data either in arrays within the program or as that data is read or written through Java’s stream interfaces:

public class Cipher implements Cloneable

Perform encryption and decryption of arbitrary data, using (potentially) a wide array of encryption algorithms.

Like all security engines, the cipher engine implements named algorithms. However, the naming convention for the cipher engine is different in that cipher algorithms are compound names that can include the name of the algorithm along with the name of a padding scheme and the name of a mode. Padding schemes and modes are specified by names -- just like algorithms. In theory, just as you may pick a new name for an algorithm, you may specify new names for a padding scheme or a mode, although the SunJCE security provider specifies several standard ones.

Modes and padding schemes are present in the Cipher class because that class implements what is known as a block cipher; that is, it expects to operate on data one block (e.g., 8 bytes) at a time. Padding schemes are required in order to ensure that the length of the data is an integral number of blocks.

Modes are provided to further alter the encrypted data in an attempt to make it harder to break the encryption. For example, if the data to be encrypted contains a number of similar ...