JSP simple password encryption decryption

Question

i need to encrypt password to insert in a database.Also when i need that password i need to decrypt this value.What is the simple way to do this?

Note : This operation have not to be very safe.

Answer 1

Please don't implement your current plans, instead you should use a MessageDigest to accomplish this. Apply a one way cryptographic hash function to the user's password (e.g. one of SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 [and there are others]) and a SALT to prevent rainbow table based attacks. Finally, for password resets, just replace the current password hash.

As an example,

// We need a bytesToHex method first. So, from -
// http://stackoverflow.com/a/9855338/2970947
final protected static char[] hexArray = "0123456789ABCDEF"
    .toCharArray();

public static String bytesToHex(byte[] bytes) {
  char[] hexChars = new char[bytes.length * 2];
  int v;
  for (int j = 0; j < bytes.length; j++) {
    v = bytes[j] & 0xFF;
    hexChars[j * 2] = hexArray[v >>> 4];
    hexChars[j * 2 + 1] = hexArray[v & 0x0F];
  }
  return new String(hexChars);
}

// Change this to something else.
private static String SALT = "123456";

// A password hashing method.
public static String hashPassword(String in) {
  try {
    MessageDigest md = MessageDigest
        .getInstance("SHA-256");
    md.update(SALT.getBytes());        // <-- Prepend SALT.
    md.update(in.getBytes());
    // md.update(SALT.getBytes());     // <-- Or, append SALT.

    byte[] out = md.digest();
    return bytesToHex(out);            // <-- Return the Hex Hash.
  } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
  }
  return "";
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
  System.out.println(hashPassword("Hello"));
  System.out.println(hashPassword("Hello"));
  System.out.println(hashPassword("Hello1"));
  System.out.println(hashPassword("Hello2"));
}

Which should output

60C1E22D18D022F01EEF0CAF999E52FD44C0C8EFD2161E9F4D24120AB0AFC84D
60C1E22D18D022F01EEF0CAF999E52FD44C0C8EFD2161E9F4D24120AB0AFC84D
CAAC2288692DD57BADFAE0225A42E59E1979E0116D009EEF01912E8C75529515
E0A3963BFAF209A17422918CB1FC950A62858993CA9A7BA6F760B8D4688306FD

Demonstrating how tremendously different one character makes the resulting hash.