SecretKey

AI-generated Key Takeaways

• SecretKey is a Java interface that represents a secret (symmetric) key used in cryptography, providing type safety for all secret key interfaces.

• Implementations must override equals, hashCode, destroy, isDestroyed, and writeObject for security and serialization purposes.

• Encoded SecretKey objects are represented in the RAW format, containing the raw key bytes.

• SecretKey is closely related to SecretKeyFactory for generating keys and Cipher for performing encryption and decryption.

• PBEKey and SecretKeySpec are notable subclasses of SecretKey.

public interface SecretKey implements Key Destroyable

Known Indirect Subclasses PBEKey, SecretKeySpec PBEKey The interface to a PBE key.  SecretKeySpec This class specifies a secret key in a provider-independent fashion.

A secret (symmetric) key. The purpose of this interface is to group (and provide type safety for) all secret key interfaces.

Provider implementations of this interface must overwrite the equals and hashCode methods inherited from Object, so that secret keys are compared based on their underlying key material and not based on reference. Implementations should override the default destroy and isDestroyed methods from the Destroyable interface to enable sensitive key information to be destroyed, cleared, or in the case where such information is immutable, unreferenced. Finally, since SecretKey is Serializable, implementations should also override ObjectOutputStream.writeObject(java.lang.Object) to prevent keys that have been destroyed from being serialized.

Keys that implement this interface return the string RAW as their encoding format (see getFormat), and return the raw key bytes as the result of a getEncoded method call. (The getFormat and getEncoded methods are inherited from the Key parent interface.)

See Also

• SecretKeyFactory
• Cipher

Constant Summary

long

serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility since J2SE 1.4.

Inherited Constant Summary

From interface java.security.Key

long

serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility with a previous version of the class.

Inherited Method Summary

From interface java.security.Key

abstract String	getAlgorithm() Returns the standard algorithm name for this key.
abstract byte[]	getEncoded() Returns the key in its primary encoding format, or null if this key does not support encoding.
abstract String	getFormat() Returns the name of the primary encoding format of this key, or null if this key does not support encoding.

From interface javax.security.auth.Destroyable

void	destroy() Destroy this Object.
boolean	isDestroyed() Determine if this Object has been destroyed.

Constants

public static final long serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility since J2SE 1.4.

Constant Value: -4795878709595146952