My AES encryption/decryption functions don't work with random ivecs

Question

I was bored and wrote a wrapper around openSSL to do AES encryption with less work. If I do it like this: http://pastebin.com/V1eqz4jp (ivec = 0)
Everything works fine, but the default ivec is all 0's, which has some security problems. Since I'm passing the data back as a string anyway, I figured, why not generate a random ivec and stick it to the front, the take it back off when I decrypt the string? For some reason it doesn't work though.

Well actually, it almost works. It seems to decrypt the middle of the string, but not the beginning or end:

String is: 0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF
Encrypting..
���l%%1u���B!
�����`pN)�ɶ���[l�ӏ��{�Q�?�2�/�HԵ�y"�=Z�Cu����l%%1u���B!

Decrypting..
String is: �%���G*�5J�0��0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF

I honestly have no idea what's going wrong. Maybe some stupid mistake, or maybe I'm missing something about AES?

Here's the code: (Edited to incorporate Steve Jessop's solution to my first problem)

/*!
 * Simple AES
 * Brendan Long
 * March 29, 2010
 * 
 * Simplified encryption and decryption using OpenSSL's AES library.
 * Remember to compile with -lcrypto and link against the library
 * g++ (your stuff) -lcrypto simpleAes.cpp (or simpleAes.o)
 *
 * Implementation note: Using the default ivec (0) is not secure. For
 *                      the full security that AES offers, use a different
 *                      ivec each time (it does not need to be secret,
 *                      just different.
 *
 * This code is released into the public domain. Yada yada..
 * Read this for details: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
 *
 * If for some reason public domain isn't good enough, you may use, alter,
 * distribute or do anything else you want with this code with no restrictions.
 */

#include <openssl/aes.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

bool seed = true;

/*!
 * Encrypts a string using AES with a 256 bit key
 * Note: If the key is less than 32 bytes, it will be null padded.
 *       If the key is greater than 32 bytes, it will be truncated
 * \param in The string to encrypt
 * \param key The key to encrypt with
 * \return The encrypted data
 */
std::string aes_encrypt(std::string in, std::string key){

    // Seed the random number generator once
    if(seed){
        srand( (unsigned int) time(NULL));
        seed = false;
    }

    // Generate a random ivec
    unsigned char ivec[16];
    for(int i=0; i<16; i++){
        ivec[i] = (unsigned char) rand();
    }

     // Round up to AES_BLOCK_SIZE
    size_t textLength = ((in.length() / AES_BLOCK_SIZE) + 1) * AES_BLOCK_SIZE;

    // Always pad the key to 32 bits.. because we can
    if(key.length() < 32){
        key.append(32 - key.length(), '\0');
    }

    // Get some space ready for the output
    unsigned char *output = new unsigned char[textLength];

    // Generate a key
    AES_KEY *aesKey = new AES_KEY;
    AES_set_encrypt_key((unsigned char*)key.c_str(), 256, aesKey);

    // Encrypt the data
    AES_cbc_encrypt((unsigned char*)in.c_str(), output, in.length() + 1, aesKey, ivec, AES_ENCRYPT);

    // Make the data into a string
    std::string ret((char*) output, textLength);

    // Add the ivec to the front
    ret = std::string((char*)ivec, 16) + ret;

    // Clean up
    delete output;
    delete aesKey;

    return ret;
}

/*!
 * Decrypts a string using AES with a 256 bit key
 * Note: If the key is less than 32 bytes, it will be null padded.
 *       If the key is greater than 32 bytes, it will be truncated
 * \param in The string to decrypt
 * \param key The key to decrypt with
 * \return The decrypted data
 */
std::string aes_decrypt(std::string in, std::string key){

    // Get the ivec from the front
    unsigned char ivec[16];
    for(int i=0;i<16; i++){
        ivec[i] = in[i];
    }

    in = in.substr(16);

    // Always pad the key to 32 bits.. because we can
    if(key.length() < 32){
        key.append(32 - key.length(), '\0');
    }

    // Create some space for output
    unsigned char *output = new unsigned char[in.length()]; 

    // Generate a key
    AES_KEY *aesKey = new AES_KEY;
    AES_set_decrypt_key((unsigned char*)key.c_str(), 256, aesKey); // key length is in bits, so 32 * 8 = 256

    // Decrypt the data
    AES_cbc_encrypt((unsigned char*)in.c_str(), output, in.length(), aesKey, ivec, AES_DECRYPT);

    // Make the output into a string
    std::string ret((char*) output);

    // Clean up
    delete output;
    delete aesKey;

    return ret;
}

Answer 1

This line is wrong:

std::string ret((char*) output);

The decrypted data doesn't have a nul terminator, since you encrypted in.length() bytes. That accounts for the garbage at the end, but not the garbage at the beginning. There may be other problems as well.

Answer 2

In general, you cannot treat the output of the encryption stage as a string, unless you perform an additional step, such as Base 64 encoding the output. Any output byte could be a nul.

Answer 3

A friend of mine figured out the problem. I'm doing this:

1. Generate random number and store it in ivec
2. Encrypt data with ivec
3. Append ivec to beginning of output data

The problem is that step 2 changes the contents of ivec. I was basically storing random numbers at the beginning of my string. The solution was to add this:

unsigned char ivec[16];
// set ivec to random numbers
std::string ivecString((char*) ivec, 16);
// encrypt data
return ivecString + encryptedData;