"myPassord123" (sic) would actually be a 12 byte key (it has twelve characters). The real problem is that by using only the characters available on your keyboard, and by using english words, you are making a brute force attack on your encrypted data a relatively easy task. You should choose a truely random key generated from your systems entropy pool and then processed further (via a hashing function, possibly) to make it more random and secure. The Crypt::Random module can generate cryptographically secure random numbers (keys) for you.

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IndyZ