Simplified Crypto Libraries for iOS - ios

I've worked with Java cryptography for many years. Now, we have a requirement to write an iOS application that will send encrypted payloads from the mobile device to a Java service. I've begun working with the iOS crypto support (CommonCrypto, etc.) and have found it a bit more difficult. The JCE has a very clean, concise API, so I've clearly gotten spoiled. In contrast, iOS cryptography is a far more difficult API to work with.
Are there any simplified crypto libraries or wrappers around CommonCrypto that provide a more concise API? In particular, we need:
Key generation (both symmetric and asymmetric)
Encryption/decryption of data
Digital signatures (SHA1withRSA, for example)
Hashing
RSA, 3DES, and AES support
I know I've seen a sample class or two that wraps AES encryption, for example. I'm looking for something a bit richer and more full-featured. Anyone have any suggestions?

You can use openSSL inside your iOS app, for ease of use you can use the SSCrypto library by septicus.
From the septicus site:
SSCrypto.framework provides a simple wrapper around OpenSSL library
functions for encryption, decryption (both symmetric and RSA) and
checksums. It also encodes and decodes base64 data and can generate
both private and public RSA keys. A test tool is included in the
project. Click here to see the main.m file that comes with SSCrypto
for examples of it's use.

Related

Implement jcryption in Objective C

I need to implement jcryption in IOS. I have gone through the library it uses Rijndael encryption internally to encrypt the data.
I have tried AES256EncryptWithKey but it is not giving me expected encryption key.
Any help on this would be nice. Thanks
Rijndael with a 128-bit block size is AES. Use Common Crypto on iOS, it uses the hardware encryption engine. There are several ObjC AES answers here on SO, see iOS AES Encryption.
For a detailed answer you will need to provide your usage information on jCryption.
Also notice that jCryption has been discontinued. If you are trying to use jCryption in place of HTTPS the correct solution is to use HTTPS, see jCryption.

CMAC-AES on iOS

I'm converting an Android app to iOS. The Android version uses CMAC-AES cryptography, but I couldn't find CMAC for iOS. Does anyone know a library or could give a tip? I am not familiar with cryptography, so I am little messy.
CMAC stands for Cipher-based Message Authentication Code, that means it's a message authentication code (it is used to authenticate data and avoid any corruption of the data being authenticated) that uses ciphers to achieve its goals, in your particular case it uses the AES cipher to do so.
There are indeed some libraries that you could use, you may use OpenSSL (you may try others tutorials that links OpenSSL to your project) which is a well adopted library and heavily maintened.

iOS Hardware encryption vs own implementation

I am developing an app that stores PDF files. These files should be stored secure, i. e. encrypted. I also found some libraries that extend NSData with AES en/decryption. But then I read, that iOS supports hardware encryption via AES. Is the NSData library really necessary if they both provide AES256 encryption?
If there are differences, which way is more secure? Also.. how do I activate the hardware encryption? Or is this a global setting that applies to all apps? I guess that the files become decrypted after the device is unlocked? So if someone cracks my phone he has also access to the decrypted files? But if I do the encryption by myself and connect the decryption with a SHA hashed password that is stored in the keychain the files might still be inaccessible?
Edit:
Did I get it all wrong and my library (AQToolkit) is just some kind of API for the built-in hardware encryption and I am basically talking about the same thing?
I heartily recommend RNCryptor, which uses Apple's own Security.framework guaranteeing hardware encryption/decryption if possible. It's incredibly easy to use in the default case (AES-256 with 10k iterations of PBKDF2). It's not an encryption library per se, but rather an Obj-C packaging of the open source Common Crypto C library. Check it out.

AES encryption using MonoTouch

I am building a Monotouch application which downloads data from the server encrypted using AES. I then need to decrypt this data when the file is accessed.
What is the best way for doing this using MonoTouch? iOS AES decryption is apparently hardware accelerated and so I would ideally like to call into CCCrypt. I am a bit of a n00b to MonoTouch so does anyone know how to do this?
Or alternatively is there a better approach to doing AES decryption in MonoTouch?
MonoTouch provides AES support inside it's class library, e.g. the RijndaelManaged class.
However you need to know a bit more about how it was encrypted (cipher mode, padding mode, key size) to be able to decrypt a file. Also depending on the file size you might want to decrypt it in memory (safer) if it's small or to a temporary file (if large).
Notes:
Rijndael is the original name of the algorithm that got selected to be AES;
AES is a subset of Rijndael (only one block size, 128 bits) so you can do everything AES supports using RijndaelManaged;
At the moment MonoTouch does not use CommonCrypto (it uses the managed implementation from Mono) so you won't get hardware acceleration. This will likely change in future releases (and will be compatible, i.e. simply re-compile, for people who used RijndaelManaged in their applications).
EDIT
MonoTouch 5.3.3 (alpha) now default to use CommonCrypto implementations, including hardware acceleration (when available) for AES and SHA1.
If you are interested in encrypting data at rest (i.e. a database) under MonoTouch SQLCipher might be a good option (http://sqlcipher.net). The MonoTouch provider for SQLCipher provides SQLite full database encryption using AES-256 (http://sqlcipher.net/sqlcipher-for-monotouch). There is also a companion library for Mono on Android, which provides the same API and features for android (http://sqlcipher.net/sqlcipher-on-mono-for-android)
Disclosure: I work for Zetetic, the author of SQLCipher.

Delphi asymmetric encryption

I'm looking for a Delphi implementation of an asymmetric encryption algorithm without any dependencies on external DLLs. Is there any available?
My goal is to encrypt/decrypt a string (or array of bytes) using a public/private key pair.
SecureBlackBox from Eldos offers a native, comprehensive solution - including certificate management and access to external crypto devices (i.e. USB tokens)
LockBox is now improved. It allows long keys for RSA, AES cipher and is in active development.
It is free, Open Source and 100% native code with no DLLs.
You can try Lockbox - http://sourceforge.net/projects/tplockbox/. It's free and includes RSA among others (Blowfish, MD5, SHA-1, DES, triple-DES, Rijndael, & digital signing of messages).
It comes complete with a good RSA example that demonstrates how to generate your public/private keys and how to actually encrypt and decrypt data using the keys.
I'm currently using it with Delphi 2010.
I realize that the original question stated "no external DLLs" but in the absence of an acceptable answer maybe you should take a look at the OpenSSL DLLs along with this Delphi link which contains an import unit for the library and some good examples on how to use it, including RSA encryption.
I have tinkered with this and got it working pretty well. There are some changes required to make it work with unicode Delphi - but these are mostly to do with changing PChar to PAnsiChar or PBytes.
Simple Delphi wrappers now allow me to sign/verify/encrypt sym or asym and use SSL. And let's be honest - the distribution of the OpenSSL DLLs is a lot more straightforward than some of the Microsoft offerings. Plus it's free and well maintained.
Take a look at the FGInt package on this site: http://submanifold.be/
If you can stomach using Windows services, there is the Crypto API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa380255(v=VS.85).aspx
If you are targeting Vista and up, there is the new Cryptography API: Next Generation. This also supports Elliptic Curve crypto: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa376210(VS.85).aspx
Another very good fairly complete package is the Delphi Encryption Compendium (DEC) 5.2. You can download (Free with source) from http://www.torry.net/pages.php?id=519#939342.

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