Equivalent Hashing in C# and Objective-C using HMAC256 - objective-c

Question

I'm working with a partner and we're not able to get C# and Objective-C to produce the same hashes using what we think are the same tools in the respective languages. In C#, I'm doing this:
byte[] noncebytes=new byte[32];
//We seed the hash generator with a new 32 position array. Each position is 0.
//In prod code this would be random, but for now it's all 0s.
HMACSHA256 hmac256 = new HMACSHA256(noncebytes);
string plaintext = "hello";
string UTFString = Convert.ToBase64String(
System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(plaintext));
string HashString = Convert.ToBase64String(
hmac256.ComputeHash(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(plaintext))); //Convert that hash to a string.
This produces the following base64string hash:
Q1KybjP+DXaaiSKmuikAQQnwFojiasyebLNH5aWvxNo=
What is the equivalent Objective-C code to do this? We need the client and the server to be able to generate matching hashes for matching data.
Here is the Objective-C code we are currently using:
...
NSData *zeroNumber = [self zeroDataWithBytes:32]; //empty byte array
NSString *nonceTest = [zeroNumber base64String]; // using MF_Base64Additions.h here
NSData *hashTest = [self hmacForKeyAndData:nonceTest withData:#"hello"]; //creating hash
NSString *hashTestText = [hashTest base64String];
NSLog(#"hello hash is %#", hashTestText);
...
//functions for zeroing out the byte. I'm sure there's a better way
- (NSData *)zeroDataWithBytes: (NSUInteger)length {
NSMutableData *mutableData = [NSMutableData dataWithCapacity: length];
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
NSInteger bits = 0;
[mutableData appendBytes: (void *) &bits length: 1];
} return mutableData;
}
//hash function
-(NSData *) hmacForKeyAndData:(NSString *)key withData:(NSString *) data {
const char *cKey = [key cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
const char *cData = [data cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
unsigned char cHMAC[CC_SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH];
CCHmac(kCCHmacAlgSHA256, cKey, strlen(cKey), cData, strlen(cData), cHMAC);
return [[NSData alloc] initWithBytes:cHMAC length:sizeof(cHMAC)];
}

Answer 1

UPDATE:
There is a pretty good project on GitHub that seems to accomplish everything you want, plus a lot more encryption related options; includes unit tests.
NSData *hmacForKeyAndData(NSString *key, NSString *data)
{
const char *cKey = [key cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
const char *cData = [data cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
unsigned char cHMAC[CC_SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH];
CCHmac(kCCHmacAlgSHA256, cKey, strlen(cKey), cData, strlen(cData), cHMAC);
return [[NSData alloc] initWithBytes:cHMAC length:sizeof(cHMAC)];
}
(Source)
With the above, I think you will have import <CommonCrypto/CommonHMAC.h>. The next step for encoding to Base64:
+ (NSString *)Base64Encode:(NSData *)data
{
//Point to start of the data and set buffer sizes
int inLength = [data length];
int outLength = ((((inLength * 4)/3)/4)*4) + (((inLength * 4)/3)%4 ? 4 : 0);
const char *inputBuffer = [data bytes];
char *outputBuffer = malloc(outLength);
outputBuffer[outLength] = 0;
//64 digit code
static char Encode[] = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/";
//start the count
int cycle = 0;
int inpos = 0;
int outpos = 0;
char temp;
//Pad the last to bytes, the outbuffer must always be a multiple of 4
outputBuffer[outLength-1] = '=';
outputBuffer[outLength-2] = '=';
/* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64
Text content M a n
ASCII 77 97 110
8 Bit pattern 01001101 01100001 01101110
6 Bit pattern 010011 010110 000101 101110
Index 19 22 5 46
Base64-encoded T W F u
*/
while (inpos < inLength){
switch (cycle) {
case 0:
outputBuffer[outpos++] = Encode[(inputBuffer[inpos]&0xFC)>>2];
cycle = 1;
break;
case 1:
temp = (inputBuffer[inpos++]&0x03)<<4;
outputBuffer[outpos] = Encode[temp];
cycle = 2;
break;
case 2:
outputBuffer[outpos++] = Encode[temp|(inputBuffer[inpos]&0xF0)>> 4];
temp = (inputBuffer[inpos++]&0x0F)<<2;
outputBuffer[outpos] = Encode[temp];
cycle = 3;
break;
case 3:
outputBuffer[outpos++] = Encode[temp|(inputBuffer[inpos]&0xC0)>>6];
cycle = 4;
break;
case 4:
outputBuffer[outpos++] = Encode[inputBuffer[inpos++]&0x3f];
cycle = 0;
break;
default:
cycle = 0;
break;
}
}
NSString *pictemp = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:outputBuffer];
free(outputBuffer);
return pictemp;
}

Answer 2

Note the second line of code in the objective-c portion of the question.
NSString *nonceTest = [zeroNumber base64String];
but it should be this:
NSString *nonceTest = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:zeroNumber encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
It was a case of converting the string to base64 when we didn't need to for the hmac seeeding.
We now get: Q1KybjP+DXaaiSKmuikAQQnwFojiasyebLNH5aWvxNo= as the hash on both platforms.