Can't decrypt with JCE

Question

Hi all,
I've written a very simple encrypter/decrypter using JCE and the sun provider. It seems to encrypt fine, but it doesn't decrypt at all. The code is below:
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.security.spec.*;
import javax.crypto.*;
import javax.crypto.spec.*;
import com.sun.crypto.provider.*;
public class Crypt {
     private Cipher encipher;
     private Cipher decipher;
     /** Creates new Crypt */
               public Crypt() {
                    try {
                         //add the provider
                         java.security.Security.addProvider(new com.sun.crypto.provider.SunJCE());
                         //initialize everything
                         KeySpec keySpec = new PBEKeySpec(new String("test key").toCharArray());
                         SecretKey key = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBEWithMD5AndDES").generateSecret(keySpec);
                         encipher = Cipher.getInstance(key.getAlgorithm());
                         decipher = Cipher.getInstance(key.getAlgorithm());
                         AlgorithmParameterSpec paramSpec = new PBEParameterSpec(salt, iterationCount);
                         encipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, key, paramSpec);
                         decipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, key, paramSpec);
                         String toEncrypt = "this is a test";
                         String encrypted = encrypt(toEncrypt);
                         String unEncrypted = decrypt(encrypted);
                         System.out.println("Original string: " + toEncrypt);
                         System.out.println("Encrypted string: " + encrypted);
                         System.out.println("Decrypted string: " + unEncrypted);
                    } catch (Exception ex) {
                         ex.printStackTrace();
     public String encrypt(String payload) {
               try {
                    //encode the string into bytes using UTF-8
                    byte[] b = payload.getBytes("UTF8");
                    //Encrypt
                    byte[] enc = encipher.doFinal();
                    //return new String(enc);
                    return new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(enc);
               } catch (Exception ex) {
                    ex.printStackTrace();
               return null;
          public String decrypt(String payload) {
               try {
                    //decode base64 to get bytes
                    byte[] dec = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(payload);
                    System.out.println("Size: " + dec.length);
                    //decrypt
                    byte[] utf8 = decipher.doFinal(dec);
                    System.out.println("Size: " + utf8.length);
                    for (int i = 0; i < utf8.length; i++) {
                         System.out.println(utf8);
                    //Decrypt
                    return new String(utf8, "UTF8");
               } catch (Exception ex) {
                    ex.printStackTrace();
               return null;
          public static void main(String[] args) {
               Crypt c = new Crypt();
The output for
                         System.out.println("Decrypted string: " + unEncrypted);
is
Decrypted string:
so something is going wrong. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Cut and past can always come back to bite you.Heh. He who lives by the cut-buffer, dies by the cut-buffer. If I had a dime for every time I've bitten myself with a cut-n-paste error, I'd be...significantly richer than I am ;).
ThanksNo prob - it's always the simple stuff that we overlook.
Grant