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java.lang.Object | +----javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec
The password can be viewed as some kind of raw key material, from which the encryption mechanism to which it is passed derives a cryptographic key.
Different PBE mechanisms may consume different bits of each password character. For example, the PBE mechanism defined in PKCS #5 looks at only the low order 8 bits of each character, whereas PKCS #12 looks at all 16 bits of each character.
You convert the password characters to a PBE key by creating an instance of the appropriate secret-key factory. For example, a secret-key factory for PKCS #5 will construct a PBE key from only the low order 8 bits of each password character, whereas a secret-key factory for PKCS #12 will take all 16 bits of each character.
Also note that this class stores passwords as char arrays instead of String objects (which would seem more logical), because the String class is immutable and there is no way to overwrite its internal value when the password stored in it is no longer needed. Hence, this class requests the password as a char array, so it can be overwritten when done.
public static final String ident
public PBEKeySpec(char password[])
Note that the given password is cloned before it is stored in the new PBEKeySpec object.
public final char[] getPassword()
Note that this method returns a reference to the password. It is the caller's responsibility to zero out the password information after it is no longer needed.
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