Padding is invalid and cannot be removed?

Rijndael/AES is a block cypher. It encrypts data in 128 bit (16 character) blocks. Cryptographic padding is used to make sure that the last block of the message is always the correct size.

Your decryption method is expecting whatever its default padding is, and is not finding it. As @NetSquirrel says, you need to explicitly set the padding for both encryption and decryption. Unless you have a reason to do otherwise, use PKCS#7 padding.


Make sure that the keys you use to encrypt and decrypt are the same. The padding method even if not explicitly set should still allow for proper decryption/encryption (if not set they will be the same). However if you for some reason are using a different set of keys for decryption than used for encryption you will get this error:

Padding is invalid and cannot be removed

If you are using some algorithm to dynamically generate keys that will not work. They need to be the same for both encryption and decryption. One common way is to have the caller provide the keys in the constructor of the encryption methods class, to prevent the encryption/decryption process having any hand in creation of these items. It focuses on the task at hand (encrypting and decrypting data) and requires the iv and key to be supplied by the caller.