I am trying to use DES encryption to encrypt a string and hold it in memory, then later to decrypt it.

To do this I am moving the string data into a byte array which is then encrypted using a memory stream. After encryption takes place, the encrypted data is moved back into a byte array to hold in memory. This "seems" to be working, i.e. I get no error in this routine.

Later, I then try to decrypt the data in the byte array holding the encrypted data by moving the encrypted data into a memory stream and passing it through the DES decryptor. A stream reader is created to read the data from the memory stream into a string variable using the stream reader ReadToEnd() method. It is on this statement that I get a "CryptographicException: Bad Data" error.

Has anyone seen this behavior and what the cure is? Is there another way to encrypt the string, hold it memory then decrypt it?

Thanks,
Bill