Base64 Is Not Encryption: Why Encoded Data Is Still Readable
Base64 is trivially reversible by anyone. Storing or transmitting sensitive data as Base64 provides no security. Learn why and what to use instead.
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Tags: security, base64, encoding
Base64 Is Not Encryption: Why Encoded Data Is Still Readable Here is a string that appears in production codebases, security audits, and leaked credentials dumps every week: Decode it and you get: That took three seconds. No key. No algorithm knowledge beyond "this is Base64." If you are storing or transmitting sensitive data as Base64 under the assumption that it provides any protection, this article is for you. --- What Base64 Actually Is Base64 is an encoding scheme. It converts binary data — any sequence of bytes — into a string of 64 printable ASCII characters: , , , , , and for padding. The conversion algorithm is completely public. It has been documented in RFC standards since 1987. Every programming language has a built-in Base64 encoder and decoder. There is no key. There is no…
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