I am not advocating usage of passwords for encryption, I am saying that if you have to use passwords, this is how you use them. Obviously a strong random bytest

I am not advocating usage of passwords for encryption, I am saying that if you have to use passwords, this is how you use them. Obviously a strong random bytestring is the best key one could possibly have and should be used when possible. Anyways, re padding - what if I hash the padding as well? surely an attacker would not get anything of value by playing with it? Thanks