Errors can occur when reading a SAS® 9.4 data set in earlier SAS® releases when encrypted with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption


Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) enhanced encryption is available with SAS/SECURE™ software, which is included with Base SAS®, beginning with SAS 9.4. A data set that is created with AES encryption in SAS 9.4 can produce one of the following errors when it is read with SAS releases prior to SAS 9.4:

ERROR: Encryption error in R_CR_decrypt, line 2157 (error code 10022): BAD_DATA.
hc_normal_encrypt: Call to RSA decryption routine failed. Unable to decrypt page 1.
***   from XOOPEN   ***
ERROR: File ABC.FOOENC.DATA is damaged. I/O processing did not complete.
STB ERROR: requested operation failed.

ERROR: Encryption error in R_CR_decrypt, line 2157 (error code 10022): BAD_DATA.
ERROR: Invalid ENCRYPTKEY value for TEMP.EOC_YES_AES_YES_94.DATA.

ERROR:  An exception has been encountered.
Please contact technical support and provide them with the following traceback
information:
The SAS task name is [sasxkern]
ERROR:  Read Access Violation sasxkern
Exception occurred at (4A3999A)

The errors can occur because AES encryption is not supported with Base SAS until SAS 9.4.

If reading the SAS 9.4 data set that was encrypted with AES encryption using SAS 9.4, there is no exposure to the data if a very rare failure were to occur while decrypting the data. However, it is possible to receive the "An exception has been encountered" error along with the "Read Access Violation" error, as noted above.