.NET Core 3 Cryptography Ciphers

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.NET Core 3.0 adds support for AES-GCM and AES-CCM ciphers, implemented with System.Security.Cryptography.AesGcm and System.Security.Cryptography.AesCcm respectively.

  • AesGcm: Represents an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) key to be used with the Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) mode of operation.
  • AesCcm: Represents an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) key to be used with the Counter with CBC-MAC (CCM) mode of operation.

These algorithms are both Authenticated Encryption with Association Data (AEAD) algorithms.

The following code demonstrates using AesGcm cipher to encrypt and decrypt random data.

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Security.Cryptography;

namespace whats_new
{
    public static class Cipher
    {
        public static void Run()
        {
            // key should be: pre-known, derived, or transported via another channel, such as RSA encryption
            byte[] key = new byte[16];
            RandomNumberGenerator.Fill(key);

            byte[] nonce = new byte[12];
            RandomNumberGenerator.Fill(nonce);

            // normally this would be your data
            byte[] dataToEncrypt = new byte[1234];
            byte[] associatedData = new byte[333];
            RandomNumberGenerator.Fill(dataToEncrypt);
            RandomNumberGenerator.Fill(associatedData);

            // these will be filled during the encryption
            byte[] tag = new byte[16];
            byte[] ciphertext = new byte[dataToEncrypt.Length];

            using (AesGcm aesGcm = new AesGcm(key))
            {
                aesGcm.Encrypt(nonce, dataToEncrypt, ciphertext, tag, associatedData);
            }

            // tag, nonce, ciphertext, associatedData should be sent to the other part

            byte[] decryptedData = new byte[ciphertext.Length];

            using (AesGcm aesGcm = new AesGcm(key))
            {
                aesGcm.Decrypt(nonce, ciphertext, tag, decryptedData, associatedData);
            }

            // do something with the data
            // this should always print that data is the same
            Console.WriteLine($"AES-GCM: Decrypted data is {(dataToEncrypt.SequenceEqual(decryptedData) ? "the same as" : "different than")} original data.");
        }
    }
}


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