#Base64 encoding 32 bytes of random data full

Usually it is compatible with ASCII though, so base 64 is likely to work. The API should therefore also specify the character encoding. If that is directly fed into PBKDF2 or if it is first encoded as base64 makes no difference.įunny enough for a password based function PBKDF2 is also defined to operate on bytes.

If the key is not a key but a password fed into PBKDF2 then you just need to provide it enough entropy. There seems to be precious little information available for Synercoding.Encryption - that's not a good sign. You would expect that conversion from base64 or hexadecimals is well documented for the library. Obviously in such a case base64 does not make a difference. If the encryption library itself decodes the base64 then your key is first converted 1:1 to base64 and then back to the original key again. In that case you should not claim 256 bit security, as the amount of possible keys in your scheme is still 2^192. So if you have a 192 bit AES key it will be converted to an AES 256 bit key. In that case the only problem is that base64 will contain 3/4th of the entropy of a fully random key. So as long as your base 64 encoded key has a valid key size it may be accepted. This means that the bytes that make up the key can have any value.

#Base64 encoding 32 bytes of random data full

On the other hand most encryption libraries use the full range of the key space. std:string does not have to contain character strings, it can contain byte strings (a.k.a. If your library accepts character strings then they will be converted to bytes within. All modern ciphers are defined to operate on bytes (some are defined to operate on bits, but most libraries will assume a byte is the minimum unit of data). There is no way that a modern encryption library operates on characters.