I have to implement basic encryption in my program. I can use Base64 it was rejected by the client. So I am using the following methods. The problem which I am facing is the there are special characters in the encrypted which are resulting in exceptions. Can I change this code to somehow encrypt into plain text without special characters.
protected static byte[] encrypt(String text)
{
try
{
String key = "6589745268754125";
// Create key and cipher
Key aesKey = new SecretKeySpec(key.getBytes(), "AES");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
// encrypt the text
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, aesKey);
byte[] encrypted = cipher.doFinal(text.getBytes());
return encrypted;
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
WriteLog("Encryption Failed");
WriteLog(ex.getMessage());
return null;
}
}
protected static String decrypt(byte[] pass)
{
try
{
String key = "6589745268754125";
// Create key and cipher
Key aesKey = new SecretKeySpec(key.getBytes(), "AES");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES");
// decrypt the text
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, aesKey);
String decrypted = new String(cipher.doFinal(pass));
return decrypted;
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
WriteLog("Encryption Failed");
WriteLog(ex.getMessage());
return null;
}
}
The exception message says "Given final block not properly padded"
javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: Given final block not properly padded
so, basically you don't know about encryption and have the problem that your client wants encryption
ok, a quick headsup:
encoding: transforming an input to an output that holds identical information but in another representation ... ex: 1,2,3 -> a,b,c
as you can see the output looks differently but holds the same information
please note that no secret information is necessary to encode/decode
encryption: might look similar at first glance but here you need some secrets ... an encryption takes 2 inputs ... a secret and the input data
the resulting output can be decrypted, but ONLY if you have the corresponding secret
if your client wants you to encrypt something, make sure that thing can be represented as bytes ... encrypting a string... not good... encrypting a string that has been transformed into < insert arbitrary byte encoding here, for example unicode > ... ok
encryptions usually handle bytes (let's not care about historic ciphers here)
when you decide for an encryption/cipher you have to know that there are essentially 2 distinct groups: symetric and asymetric
symetric: the same key (read secret) you use to encrypt will be needed for decryption
asymetric: there are keypairs consisting of a public and a private part (public/private key) the public part is used for encryption, the private part is used for decryption ... makes no sense unless you have different parties that need to exchange keys
asymetric ciphers are usually used to encrypt decrypt the keys for symetric ciphers because they are SLOW while symetric ciphers usually are FAST
asymetric ciphers are not intended to encrypt large amounts of data
symetric ciphers are intended for bulk data
if your goal is just to keep an information encrypted while it is laying around on a harddisk, a symetric cipher is what you want
you will need a key for the cipher to operate ... and... you will have the problem where to store it ... so if you can, have the user enter a sufficiently complex password ... use the password and a function called PBKDF2 with a sufficiently high iteration count (sufficiently high= increase this number until the process takes either a few seconds if you only need this on startup, or until your users start complaining about the delay) to make binary key from the password.
use this key for AES in GCM mode (symetric cipher)
the cipher will want something called IV or initialization vector ...
the iv is no secret, you may prepend this thing to your ciphertext as clear text information
the iv needs to be the size of one block of your cipher, so in the case of AES 128 bit = 16 byte
so your IV when encrypting is a 16 byte (unique) random number (means that you may not use an IV two times or more: persist the used IVs and when getting a new one, check if it was already stored, if yes startover IV generation, if no, store it and then use it)
when decrypting, read the prepended cleartext IV from your file (first 16 byte)
if you just want to store the ciphertext on disk, write it into a binary file
if the file has to contain only printable text apply an encoding like base16/32/64 before writing your bytes to the file and decode into a byte array before decrypting (unless your data is too big for that, then you will have to find/write a stream wrapper that will add/strip encoding for you)
If the client doesn't like Base64, then try Base32 or Base16 (= hex). They are less common but well defined alternatives to Base64.
You might also find out exactly why the client doesn't want you to use Base64.
You should Base64 the encrypted content. It's usual technique by the way.
I guess the client's problem wasn't Base64 format itself but the fact, that Base64 isn't (a strong) encryption.
The problem was padding. I had use AES/CBC/NoPadding and make sure that my strings are multiple of 16 bytes. So in addition to changing the ecryption and decryption I had to add two methods. One to add \0 i.e. implicit null terminators to the end end of the text to make it a multiple of 16 and another to remove them after decryption. So the final version is like this.
public class crypto {
static String IV = "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA";
static String plaintext = "my non padded text";
static String encryptionKey = "0123456789abcdef";
public static void main(String[] args)
{
byte[] cipher = encrypt(plaintext);
String decrypted = decrypt(cipher);
}
protected static String covertto16Byte(String plainText)
{
while(plainText.length()%16 != 0)
plainText += "\0";
return plainText;
}
protected static String removePadding(String plainText)
{
return plainText.replace("\0","");
}
protected static byte[] encrypt(String plainText)
{
try
{
String _plaintText_16 = covertto16Byte(plainText);
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/NoPadding", "SunJCE");
SecretKeySpec key = new SecretKeySpec(encryptionKey.getBytes("UTF-8"), "AES");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, key,new IvParameterSpec(IV.getBytes("UTF-8")));
return cipher.doFinal(_plaintText_16.getBytes("UTF-8"));
} catch (Exception ex)
{
//catch mechanism
return null;
}
}
protected static String decrypt(byte[] cipherText)
{
try
{
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/NoPadding", "SunJCE");
SecretKeySpec key = new SecretKeySpec(encryptionKey.getBytes("UTF-8"), "AES");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, key,new IvParameterSpec(IV.getBytes("UTF-8")));
return removePadding(new String(cipher.doFinal(cipherText), "UTF-8"));
} catch (Exception ex)
{
//catch mechanism
return null;
}
}
}
Related
I am aware of a question very similar to this (How do I encrypt in Python and decrypt in Java?) but I have a different problem.
My problem is, I am not able to decrypt in Java correctly. Despite using the correct key and IV, I still get garbage characters after decryption. I don't have any compile/run-time errors or exceptions in Java so I believe I am using the right parameters for decryption.
Python Encryption Code -
from Crypto.Cipher import AES
import base64
key = '0123456789012345'
iv = 'RandomInitVector'
raw = 'samplePlainText'
cipher = AES.new(key,AES.MODE_CFB,iv)
encrypted = base64.b64encode(iv + cipher.encrypt(raw))
Java Decryption Code -
private static String KEY = "0123456789012345";
public static String decrypt(String encrypted_encoded_string) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException, NoSuchPaddingException,
InvalidKeyException, IllegalBlockSizeException, BadPaddingException {
String plain_text = "";
try{
byte[] encrypted_decoded_bytes = Base64.getDecoder().decode(encrypted_encoded_string);
String encrypted_decoded_string = new String(encrypted_decoded_bytes);
String iv_string = encrypted_decoded_string.substring(0,16); //IV is retrieved correctly.
IvParameterSpec iv = new IvParameterSpec(iv_string.getBytes());
SecretKeySpec skeySpec = new SecretKeySpec(KEY.getBytes("UTF-8"), "AES");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CFB/NoPadding");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, skeySpec, iv);
plain_text = new String(cipher.doFinal(encrypted_decoded_bytes));//Returns garbage characters
return plain_text;
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Caught Exception: " + e.getMessage());
}
return plain_text;
}
Is there anything obvious that I am missing?
The Cipher Feedback (CFB) mode of operation is a family of modes. It is parametrized by the segment size (or register size). PyCrypto has a default segment size of 8 bit and Java (actually OpenJDK) has a default segment size the same as the block size (128 bit for AES).
If you want CFB-128 in pycrypto, you can use AES.new(key, AES.MODE_CFB, iv, segment_size=128). If you want CFB-8 in Java, you can use Cipher.getInstance("AES/CFB8/NoPadding");.
Now that we have that out the way, you have other problems:
Always specify the character set you're using, because it can change between different JVMs: new String(someBytes, "UTF-8") and someString.getBytes("UTF-8"). When you do, be consistent.
Never use a String to store binary data (new String(encrypted_decoded_bytes);). You can copy the bytes directly: IvParameterSpec iv = new IvParameterSpec(Arrays.copyOf(encrypted_decoded_bytes, 16)); and cipher.doFinal(Arrays.copyOfRange(encrypted_decoded_bytes, 16, encrypted_decoded_bytes.length)).
In Java, you're assuming that the IV is written in front of the ciphertext and then encoded together, but in Python, you're never doing anything with the IV. I guess you posted incomplete code.
It is crucial for CFB mode to use a different IV every time if the key stays the same. If you don't change the IV for every encryption, you will create a multi-time pad which enables an attacker to deduce the plaintext even without knowing the key.
I am having some troubles with the following code - I seem to be getting an IllegalBlocksizeException and am unsure what it is that I maybe doing incorrectly here? Would it be possible to get some advice / pointers?
Thanks
public class Encryption
{
private SecretKeyFactory factory;
private SecretKey tmp;
private SecretKey secret;
private Cipher cipher;
private byte[] iv;
private byte[] cipherText;
private final KeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec("somepassword".toCharArray(), SALT, 65536, 256);
private static final byte[] SALT = {(byte)0xc3, (byte)0x23, (byte)0x71, (byte)0x1c, (byte)0x2e, (byte)0xc2, (byte)0xee, (byte)0x77};
public Encryption()
{
try
{
factory = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
tmp = factory.generateSecret(spec);
secret = new SecretKeySpec(tmp.getEncoded(), "AES");
cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secret);
iv = cipher.getParameters().getParameterSpec(IvParameterSpec.class).getIV();
}
catch (Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public String encrypt(String valueToEncrypt) throws Exception
{
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secret, new IvParameterSpec(iv));
cipherText = cipher.doFinal(Base64.decodeBase64(valueToEncrypt.getBytes()));
return Base64.encodeBase64String(cipherText);
}
public String decrypt(String encryptedValueToDecrypt) throws Exception
{
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, secret, new IvParameterSpec(iv));
return new String(cipher.doFinal(new Base64().encode(encryptedValueToDecrypt.getBytes())));
}
public static void main(String[] args ) throws Exception
{
Encryption manager = new Encryption();
String encrypted = manager.encrypt("this is a string which i would like to encrypt");
System.out.println(encrypted);
String decrypted = manager.decrypt(encrypted);
System.out.println(decrypted);
System.out.println(encrypted.equals(decrypted));
}
}
The exception is as follows
Exception in thread "main" javax.crypto.IllegalBlockSizeException: Input length must be multiple of 16 when decrypting with padded cipher
at com.sun.crypto.provider.CipherCore.doFinal(CipherCore.java:750)
at com.sun.crypto.provider.CipherCore.doFinal(CipherCore.java:676)
at com.sun.crypto.provider.AESCipher.engineDoFinal(AESCipher.java:313)
at javax.crypto.Cipher.doFinal(Cipher.java:2087)
at encrypt.Encryption.decrypt(Encryption.java:52)
at encrypt.Encryption.main(Encryption.java:60)
The only approach to begin with the implementation of cryptographic algorithms, from the functional point of view (please keep in mind that a working code is not necessarily a secure one, and a lot of thought should come in that direction), is incremental: first try raw AES with a fixed key, then add the key generated by PBKDF2 and only later Base64. The latter is just an encoding tool and should be the easiest part of the process.
But let's take a look to the code:
1. The initialization seems fine, if your goal is to generate the key out of a password.
2. During the decryption, this line stands off:
cipherText = cipher.doFinal(Base64.decodeBase64(valueToEncrypt.getBytes()));
valueToEncrypt is a readable string, but you're trying to decrypt it. Since it has only lowercase letters and spaces, it might not trigger an error, but you're trying to base64-decode something that hasn't been base64-encoded. It would make more sense to try:
cipherText = cipher.doFinal(valueToEncrypt.getBytes());
Then the cipherText can be base64-encoded.
For the decryption part, undo the operations in encryption in the reverse order. If you encrypted and then base64-encoded, then base64-decode first and then decrypt.
As a final recommendation: think modular. Encode in one line and encrypt in another, so if you want to remove or add a layer you just have to toggle the comments on one line.
You have reversed the base-64 encoding and decoding operations. Base-64 takes raw bytes and makes them into printable text. You can encode the output of an encryption operation to make it printable. But then you will need to base‑64–decode that text before trying to decrypt it.
This part of your decrypt() method is causing the problem:
cipher.doFinal(new Base64().encode(encryptedValueToDecrypt.getBytes()))
That should be:
cipher.doFinal(Base64.decodeBase64(encryptedValueToDecrypt.getBytes()))
Asking for "pointers" is pretty open-ended. The best pointer I can give you: don't write this code yourself. Choose a package that provides a higher-level API, selecting high-security algorithms and applying them according to best practices. You don't know what you are doing, and you won't be able to write secure code. But using a high quality, open source library might help you begin to learn more about encryption.
You probably should base64 decode encryptedValueToDecrypt before you decrypt it.
I try to decrypt an encrypted data that I receive from a web service.
The encryption is done using AES 128.
I use the following code to decrypt the data:
public static String decrypt(String strToDecrypt)
{
try
{
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS7Padding"); //AES/CBC/PKCS7Padding
SecretKeySpec secretKey = new SecretKeySpec(AppConstants.AESEncryptionKey.getBytes("UTF8"), "AES");
int blockSize = cipher.getBlockSize();
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, secretKey, new IvParameterSpec(new byte[blockSize])); //new IvParameterSpec(new byte[16])
byte decBytes[] = cipher.doFinal(Base64.decode(strToDecrypt, 0));
// byte decBytes[] = cipher.doFinal(Base64.decodeBase64(strToDecrypt));
String decStr = new String(decBytes);
System.out.println("After decryption :" + decStr);
return decStr;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
System.out.println("Exception in decryption : " + e.getMessage());
}
return null;
}
At
cipher.doFinal()
I got the following Exception:
javax.crypto.badpaddingexception pad block corrupted
I went through my post but ended up with no solution. I am badly stuck over here.
SecureRandom sr = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG","Crypto");
works perfectly
Note: This code works only on devices up to Android 6. Starting with Android 7.0 the "Crypto" provider has been removed, therefore this code will fail.
AES keys should consist of random data. If you store them as a String then you are likely to loose information, especially if you use encodings such as UTF-8. Your line:
AppConstants.AESEncryptionKey.getBytes("UTF8")
Makes it likely that you've lost data during conversion to/from a string. Use hexadecimals instead if you require a string, or simply store the key as a byte array.
Note that this answer doesn't indicate any security related hints. In general you only want to derive keys or store them in containers. You don't want to use CBC over an insecure channel either.
In my case issue is came because encrypted key and decrypted key both are different, when I check both key with same value then issue is not came
I have written a small application to encrypt and decrypt Strings using AES. Here is the code:
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec;
import javax.crypto.KeyGenerator;
import javax.crypto.SecretKey;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
import java.security.SecureRandom;
public class AesEncryptionTest {
static IvParameterSpec initialisationVector = generateInitialisationVector();
static SecretKey encryptionKey = generateKey();
static String plainText = "test text 123\0\0\0";
public static void main(String [] args) {
try {
System.out.println("Initial Plain Text = " + plainText);
byte[] encryptedText = encrypt(plainText, encryptionKey);
System.out.println("Encrypted Text = " + encryptedText);
String decryptedText = decrypt(encryptedText, encryptionKey);
System.out.println("Decrypted Text = " + decryptedText);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static byte[] encrypt(String plainText, SecretKey encryptionKey) throws Exception {
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/NoPadding", "SunJCE");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, encryptionKey, initialisationVector);
return cipher.doFinal(plainText.getBytes("UTF-8"));
}
public static String decrypt(byte[] encryptedText, SecretKey encryptionKey) throws Exception {
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/NoPadding", "SunJCE");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, encryptionKey, initialisationVector);
return new String(cipher.doFinal(encryptedText),"UTF-8");
}
public static SecretKey generateKey() {
SecretKey secretKey = null;
try {
KeyGenerator keyGenerator = KeyGenerator.getInstance("AES");
keyGenerator.init(128);
secretKey = keyGenerator.generateKey();
} catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException ex) {
// Whine a little
}
return secretKey;
}
public static IvParameterSpec generateInitialisationVector() {
byte[] initVector = new byte[16];
SecureRandom secureRandom = new SecureRandom();
secureRandom.nextBytes(initVector);
return new IvParameterSpec(initVector);
}
}
Output:
Initial Plain Text = test text 123
Encrypted Text = [B#407dcb32
Decrypted Text = test text 123
My main areas of concern are around encrypting into a byte array and decrypting back to a String. I know that this can introduce unexpected behaviour and loss of data. While this has not been observed in my testing, could anyone suggest any changes that would help combat this? I think I have this covered by ensuring UTF-8 is used both ways.
If anyone see's any other red flags with my code and how I have done this, I'm open to criticism/suggestions.
Many thanks!
You're calling toString() on a byte[] which is never a good idea. Basically it's not giving you any useful information.
If you want to convert arbitrary binary data into a string, I'd suggest using hex or base64, both of which are covered elsewhere. There's no indication that you've actually lost any information here in the encryption/decryption - the problem is your display of the encrypted data. So long as you don't try to treat that as simple encoded text data (because it isn't) you should be fine. In particular, your code is already specifying UTF-8 as the conversion from the original text to unencrypted binary data, and vice versa - so that's safe.
If you don't need to convert the byte array to a string, it's simplest to avoid doing so in the first place. (For example, you could write it to a file still in the binary form very simply, then load it back into a byte array later.)
You asked for other red flags, so I'll give you a few pointers regarding the crypto:
Generally you don't have to provide the provider name when you use an algorithm name. Specifying the provider makes your code less portable.
It is better to use a standardized padding mode such as "/PKCS5Padding" (identical to PKCS#7 padding in Java). If you want to use the current padding mode you can configure the Bouncy Castle provider and specify "/ZeroBytePadding". This padding mode does not work correctly for plaintext that ends with zero valued bytes.
You store the IV in the same class variable as the key. I know this is just test code, but normally the IV need to be send or established at both sides. The most common way to use the same key at both sides is to prefix the IV to the ciphertext.
The size of the IV depends on the cipher. It is always 16 for AES, but you may want to make the IV size configurable or use the Cipher.getBlockSize() method.
Use GCM mode (available since 1.8) encryption if you also want authenticity/integrity and protection against padding oracle attacks.
You should use a fresh, random IV for each encrypt, instead of generating an IV just once.
the way to make sure the conversion is without loss is to use the same Charset when converting back and forth as you do.
Creating a string of the encrypted data is however not safe for further use; it can contain any and all sequences of bytes and might not fit into whatever Charset you originally used (you're not making this error, just pointing it out).
You're also printing the hashcode of the byte[] mid way in the code, not the individual bytes.
I am able to encrypt data however when decrypting it i am getting the following error:
Error
HTTP Status 500 - Request processing failed; nested exception is javax.crypto.IllegalBlockSizeException: Input length must be multiple of 8 when decrypting with padded cipher
org.springframework.web.util.NestedServletException: Request processing failed; nested exception is javax.crypto.IllegalBlockSizeException: Input length must be multiple of 8 when decrypting with padded cipher
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:894)
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:778)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:728)
Here is my Encryption and Decryption code
//secret key 8
private static String strkey ="Blowfish";
UPDATED
//encrypt using blowfish algorithm
public static byte[] encrypt(String Data)throws Exception{
SecretKeySpec key = new SecretKeySpec(strkey.getBytes("UTF8"), "Blowfish");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("Blowfish");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, key);
return (cipher.doFinal(Data.getBytes("UTF8")));
}
//decrypt using blow fish algorithm
public static String decrypt(byte[] encryptedData)throws Exception{
SecretKeySpec key = new SecretKeySpec(strkey.getBytes("UTF8"), "Blowfish");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("Blowfish");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, key);
byte[] decrypted = cipher.doFinal(encryptedData);
return new String(decrypted);
}
If you run your encrypt and decrypt methods in a main method, it will work. But if the results of encrypt are put into a url and then the url parameter is decrypted, it will fail.
After encryption, the byte array contains values that are outside the character set of URLS (non-ascii), so this value gets encoded when it is stuffed into a url. And you you receive a corrupted version for decryption.
As an example, when I created a string from an encrypted byte array, it looked like this Ž ¹Qêz¦ but if I put it into a URL it turns into Ž%0B¹Qêz¦.
The fix, as suggested in other comments, is to add a encode / decode step. After encryption, the value should be encoded to a format which contains ascii characters. Base 64 is an excellent choice. So you return encrypted and encoded value in the url. When you receive the param, first decode then decrypt, and you'll get the original data.
Here are some notes on the implementation.
Use a library like commons codec. It is my weapon of choice, this class specifically http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-codec/apidocs/org/apache/commons/codec/binary/Base64.html.
In the class that does encryption and decryption, have a shared instance of Base64. To instantiate it use new Base64(true); this produces url safe strings.
Your encrypt and decrypt method signatures should accept and return strings, not byte arrays.
So the last line of your encrypt would become something like return base64.encodeToString(cipher.doFinal(Data.getBytes("UTF8"))); You can now safely pass the encrypted value in a url
In your decrypt, you first step is to decode. So the first line would become something like byte[] encryptedData = base64.decodeBase64(encrypted);
I just took your code and added some base 64 stuff, the result looks like this:
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64;
public class Test {
private static String strkey ="Blowfish";
private static Base64 base64 = new Base64(true);
//encrypt using blowfish algorithm
public static String encrypt(String Data)throws Exception{
SecretKeySpec key = new SecretKeySpec(strkey.getBytes("UTF8"), "Blowfish");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("Blowfish");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, key);
return base64.encodeToString(cipher.doFinal(Data.getBytes("UTF8")));
}
//decrypt using blow fish algorithm
public static String decrypt(String encrypted)throws Exception{
byte[] encryptedData = base64.decodeBase64(encrypted);
SecretKeySpec key = new SecretKeySpec(strkey.getBytes("UTF8"), "Blowfish");
Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("Blowfish");
cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, key);
byte[] decrypted = cipher.doFinal(encryptedData);
return new String(decrypted);
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String data = "will this work?";
String encoded = encrypt(data);
System.out.println(encoded);
String decoded = decrypt(encoded);
System.out.println(decoded);
}
}
Hope this answers your questions.
You can't create a String out of random (in this case encrypted) bytes like you're doing in the last line of your encrypt method - you need to create a Base64 encoded string instead (which you then need to decode back to a byte array in the decrypt method). Alternatively, just have your encrypt method return a byte array and have your decrypt method accept a byte array as its parameter.
The problem is with the way you are creating String instances out of the raw encrypted byte[] data. You need to either use binhex encoding like that provided by javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter via the parseHexBinary and printHexBinary methods or base 64 using the parseBase64Binary and printBase64Binary methods of the same object.
One other word of advice, never rely on the default mode and padding, always be explicit. Use something like Cipher.getInstance("Blowfish/CBC/PKCS5Padding") depending on what your needs are.