Using "strong" JRE policy files with BouncyCastle

Question

Cryptography newbie here... I'm trying to do 128-bit encryption using BouncyCastle with the code below.

import java.io.BufferedOutputStream;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.security.KeyStore;
import java.security.Security;
import java.security.cert.X509Certificate;

import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;
import org.bouncycastle.cms.CMSEnvelopedDataGenerator;
import org.bouncycastle.cms.CMSEnvelopedDataStreamGenerator;
import org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider;

public class Test {
        public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable {
                Security.addProvider(new BouncyCastleProvider());

                KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance("PKCS12");

                FileInputStream keyStoreFile = new FileInputStream("test.p12");

                try {
                        keyStore.load(keyStoreFile, "test12".toCharArray());
                } finally {
                        keyStoreFile.close();
                }

                X509Certificate certificate = (X509Certificate) keyStore
                                .getCertificate(keyStore.aliases().nextElement());

                OutputStream output = new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(
                                "test.out"));

                try {
                        InputStream input = new FileInputStream("test.in");

                        try {
                                CMSEnvelopedDataStreamGenerator generator = new CMSEnvelopedDataStreamGenerator();

                                generator.addKeyTransRecipient(certificate);

                                OutputStream encryptedOutput = generator.open(output,
                                                CMSEnvelopedDataGenerator.AES128_WRAP, 128,
                                                BouncyCastleProvider.PROVIDER_NAME);

                                try {
                                        IOUtils.copy(input, encryptedOutput);
                                } finally {
                                        encryptedOutput.close();
                                }
                        } finally {
                                input.close();
                        }
                } finally {
                        output.close();
                }
        }
}

But I get this error:

Exception in thread "main" org.bouncycastle.cms.CMSException: key inappropriate for algorithm.
        at org.bouncycastle.cms.CMSEnvelopedDataStreamGenerator.open(Unknown Source)
        at org.bouncycastle.cms.CMSEnvelopedDataStreamGenerator.open(Unknown Source)
        at org.bouncycastle.cms.CMSEnvelopedDataStreamGenerator.open(Unknown Source)
        at hk.gov.gld.etb.uploading.pkcs7.Test.main(Test.java:45)
Caused by: java.security.InvalidKeyException: Illegal key size or default parameters
        at javax.crypto.Cipher.a(DashoA13*..)
        at javax.crypto.Cipher.init(DashoA13*..)
        at org.bouncycastle.cms.CMSEnvelopedGenerator$RecipientInf.toRecipientInfo(Unknown Source)
        ... 4 more

The certificate I used was generated using the JDK's keytool program as follows:

keytool -genkeypair -dname "cn=test" -alias test -keystore test.p12 -storepass test12 -validity 180 -storetype pkcs12 -keyalg rsa

The JDK version I use is 6 and the BouncyCastle version I used is 141.

Am I doing it the right way? Do I still need to install the unlimited strength policy files to do 128-bit encryption?

Help is very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I believe so - you'll need US_export_policy.jar and local_policy.jar. We needed to do the same thing in our project, and this fixed it up.

I think your keys as generated and used should be fine, otherwise. Add those two jars to jre/lib/security, and that should fix you up straight away.

Answer 2

Seems that version 141 of the BouncyCastle library has a bug. When I upgraded to the latest version (143), the exact same code worked.