AES Encryption - Key versus IV

Question

The application I am working on lets the user encrypt files. The files could be of any format (spreadsheet, document, presentation, etc.).

For the specified input fi

Answer 1

When you use an IV, the most important thing is that the IV should be as unique as possible, so in practice you should use a random IV. This means embedding it in your application is not an option. I would save the IV in the data file, as it does not harm security as long as the IV is random/unique.