Encrypting a database with SQLCipher

SQLCipher is one of the simplest ways to enable secure storage in an Android app, and it's compatible for devices running Android 2.1+. SQLCipher uses 256-bit AES in CBC mode to encrypt each database page; in addition, each page has its own random initialization vector to further increase security.

SQLCipher is a separate implementation of the SQLite database, and rather than implementing its own encryption, it uses the widely used and tested OpenSSL libcrypto library. While this ensures greater security and wider compatibility, it does come with a relatively high .apk file footprint of roughly 7 MB. This additional weight is probably the only disadvantage of using SQLCipher.

According to the SQLCipher website, in terms of read/write performance, there is a ~5 percent performance hit that is negligible unless your app is performing complex SQL joins (but it is worth noting that these aren't great in SQLite either). The good news for commercial development...