Unable to encrypt using SQLCipher

Question

I'm currently working on a simple account management app for the iPhone. I'm using sqlcipher to encrypt and decrypt the database.

Currently i have an unencrypted database in the application bundle, which i want to either copy to the iPhone document directory and then get it encrypted, or get it encrypted before i copy it over to the document directory.

The problem that i'm facing is that no matter what i do, i seem to get an unencrypted database, no matter what method of encryption i try to use, be it the "ATTACH" database method or the "key()/rekey()" method.

I tried using the "ATTACH" database method in terminal but the result was an unencrypted database. I tried using the "key()/rekey()" method programmatically as seen here:

 sqlite3 *db;
 NSString *defaultDBPath = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"KeyCrypt.sqlite"];
 if (sqlite3_open([defaultDBPath UTF8String],&db)==SQLITE_OK) {
  NSLog (@"Running keying.");
  sqlite3_key(db, "1234", 4);
  if (sqlite3_exec(db, (const char*) "SELECT count(*) FROM sqlite_master;", NULL, NULL, NULL) == SQLITE_OK) {
   // password is correct, or, database has been initialized
   NSLog (@"This has occured correctly?");
  } 
  else 
  {
   // incorrect password!
   NSLog (@"This has occured incorrectly?");
  }
 }

Am i doing something wrong, somewhere? I've tried researching online for one whole day and couldn't come close to finding a solution for why my database isn't encrypted before or during runtime :(

If you require any extra information i am willing to provide it to you, please help a student out!

THANK YOU!

EDIT:

Excerpt of method used to key my db.

 //Initializing the sqlite3_key function.
        int sqlite3_key(sqlite3 *db, const void *pKey, int nKey);
        sqlite3_key(db, "1234", 4);

Apparently i didn't initialize the sqlite3_key -_-". Also eventhough the file is encrypted the check still says something occurred incorrectly and database wasn't successfully opened.

Regarding the opening of databases, every instance i open my database i have to run the sqlite3_key right? And during that instance I can access the database as per normal right?

Thank you for all the help.

Stephen Lombardo · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-30 20:00:16Z

3

Using rekey to convert an unencrypted database to an encrypted database is no longer supported by SQLCipher due to several complexities involved with changing the page size and reserved bytes required for per-page initialization vectors. Thus, the code you provided will not operate on any recent version of SQLCipher. Based on what you want to do, there are two options:

Our current guidance for adding encryption to a database is to use ATTACH. In short, you attach an encrypted database to your standard SQLite database, and then copy data between the two. Here is a post describing the approach: How to encrypt a plaintext SQLite database to use SQLCipher
Instead of distributing an unencrypted database in the application bundle, just include an encrypted copy of the the database in the that is using a known key. Then, on startup, copy the database into place, open it with the known default key, and and run rekey with the new per-user key data. This would rewrite the database to use the new key as you wanted.

answered Nov 30, 2010 at 20:00

Stephen Lombardo

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1 Comment

seelani Over a year ago

For some reason i managed to get my code to get the sqlite_key to encrypt my unencrypted db into the application documentary as an encrypted db. Although i wonder why the loop used to check doesn't work. Edit my question to include script that i use to key my db.

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