AES Encrypt / Decrypt
AES-256-GCM encryption with PBKDF2 key derivation (100,000 iterations, SHA-256). Military-grade, zero-dependency, runs entirely in your browser.
About AES-256-GCM Encryption
AES-256-GCM is the gold standard for symmetric encryption. It provides both confidentiality (your data is unreadable) and integrity (your data hasn't been tampered with). We use PBKDF2 with 100,000 SHA-256 iterations to derive a strong key from your password, and generate a unique random salt and IV for every encryption — meaning the same plaintext encrypted twice will produce different outputs.
AES Block Cipher — Live Simulation
Watch a 16-byte state matrix transform through one AES round
User-supplied passphrase — any length
100,000 iterations of HMAC-SHA256 derive a 256-bit key from the password + random 16-byte salt
12-byte cryptographically random initialization vector generated fresh for this encryption
Authenticated encryption — encrypts plaintext and produces a 16-byte authentication tag
Salt + IV + auth tag + ciphertext packed together and Base64-encoded into one portable string
Decode the ciphertext string — extract the embedded salt, IV, auth tag, and encrypted bytes
Run PBKDF2 with the same password and the extracted salt — reproduces the exact same 256-bit key
Decrypt using the key and IV — GCM simultaneously verifies the authentication tag
If the auth tag doesn't match (wrong password or tampered data) decryption aborts with an error
Original message returned — only possible with the correct password
Spec: NIST SP 800-38D (AES-GCM), RFC 8018 (PBKDF2), FIPS 197 (AES)