I am taking in user input and need to turn it into an AES encryption key. I have:
keyInput= input("Enter key:")
key = keyInput.encode()
print(key)
If I type in "computer" for the input. I get the result b'computer' for the output.
Shouldn't it look something more like this?
b'\xbf\xc0\x85)\x10nc\x94\x02)j\xdf\xcb\xc4\x94\x9d(\x9e[EX\xc8\xd5\xbfI{\xa2$\x05(\xd5\x18'
"computer" cannot be an AES key because it only consists of ASCII characters. Keys for algorithms such as AES should consist of fully randomized bits and of course of a specific size (128, 192 or 256 bits).
What you are after is password based encryption. For this there are standards, such as PKCS#5, literally the "Password-Based Cryptography Specification" (Version 2.1). Basically it uses PBKDF2 to calculate a key from a relatively weak password using a salt and a work factor (or, in the case of PBKDF2, an iteration count).
Long answer: https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/53552/aes-with-small-and-large-string-keys
Short answer. AES takes a 128-bit, 192-bit, or 256-bit key. Some APIs let you use a password instead of a key. How the password gets converted into the appropriate length key is not part of the AES standard. There are a large number of "Password Based Key Derivation Functions" (PBKDF) that perform this function.
