So What Does A Modern Encryption Key Look Like?
So what does an encryption key look like these days? Well, it depends on whether your a computer or a human. For a computer, it is just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s, but for humans, we are not so good at interpreting binary. We also need a bit more information about the key, such as when it was created.
And so the JSON format is often used to view a key, and Google Tink is a great place to view the key. With this we can define a symmetric key, and where we give the key and ID, and then define the key type (as we can use a range of encryption methods). In the following we use an AES GCM key: [link]
{
"primaryKeyId": 1331912396,
"key": [{
"keyData": {
"typeUrl": "type.googleapis.com/google.crypto.tink.AesGcmKey",
"keyMaterialType": "SYMMETRIC",
"value": "GhBpskWWTrE27e2w67X4TzfS"
},
"outputPrefixType": "TINK",
"keyId": 1331912396,
"status": "ENABLED"
}]
}
The key is “GhBpskWWTrE27e2w67X4TzfS”. The hexadecimal format is:
1A1069B245964EB136EDEDB0EBB5F84F37D2
and which is 36 hex characters, and which is 144 bits. This gives 128 bits for the key and a few extra bits for some parameters.