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AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is the symmetric encryption algorithm used to protect everything from HTTPS connections to encrypted hard drives — it's the current industry standard, unlike the classical ciphers found elsewhere on this site.
This tool encrypts or decrypts text using AES-256 in CBC mode, with a real password-based key derivation function rather than using your password directly as the encryption key.
How it works
Enter your text and a password. To encrypt, a random 16-byte salt and a random 16-byte initialization vector (IV) are generated, and your password is combined with the salt using PBKDF2 (100,000 rounds of SHA-256) to derive a proper 256-bit key. The text is then encrypted with AES-256-CBC, and the salt, IV, and ciphertext are combined into one base64-encoded block you can copy. To decrypt, paste that block back in with the same password — the tool extracts the salt and IV, re-derives the same key, and reverses the encryption.
- Enter mode.
- Enter text.
- Enter password.
- Click Calculate to see your results.
Examples
Encrypting a message
Encrypting "Attack at dawn" with a password produces a different base64 block every time (because the salt and IV are random), but decrypting any of them with the correct password always returns "Attack at dawn".
Who should use it
- Encrypting sensitive notes or short messages before storing or sharing them.
- Learning how modern password-based encryption (salt + PBKDF2 + AES-CBC) actually works in practice.
Industry applications
- Data security and encryption software
- Secure messaging and storage systems
Advantages
- AES-256 is a real, modern, industry-standard cipher — not a classical/historical one.
- Uses proper password-based key derivation (PBKDF2) instead of a naive password-as-key approach.
Limitations
- Security still depends on choosing a strong password — this tool can't protect a weak, guessable one.
- RSA can only encrypt very short messages directly — for this tool that's not a concern since AES has no such limit, but the point still holds that a cipher's theoretical strength doesn't remove the need for good password hygiene.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Losing the password used to encrypt — there's no way to recover the original text without it, by design.
- Copying only part of the base64-encoded result when decrypting — the salt, IV, and ciphertext are all packed into that single block and all of it is needed.
Best practices
- Use a long, unique password rather than a short or reused one — PBKDF2 slows down brute-force attempts but can't make a weak password strong.
- Keep a secure backup of anything important you encrypt — if you lose the password, the data is unrecoverable.
Tips
- If you need to share encrypted text with someone else, share the password through a separate, trusted channel — never alongside the encrypted text itself.