private string SimpleStringEncrypt(string toEncrypt, string key, System.Text.Encoding encoding)

{

byte[] text = encoding.GetBytes(toEncrypt);

TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider tdes = new TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider();

MD5CryptoServiceProvider hashMD5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();

tdes.Mode = System.Security.Cryptography.CipherMode.CBC;

tdes.Key = hashMD5.ComputeHash(System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(key));

tdes.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;

return Convert.ToBase64String(tdes.CreateEncryptor().TransformFinalBlock(text, 0, text.Length));

}

public string URLEncode(string s)

{

Encoding e = Encoding.UTF8;

return HttpUtility.UrlEncode(s, e);

}

The issue I am having however is around the passphrase. I am trying to use a key (A VALID sample passphrase is: XZ5n45Ej1byXRqGh73rfnc1FH2R/cKQy)

The issue i am running into is that it says that the keylength is invalid; however if I do the same thing in Java with this code:

 private static KeySpec keySpec;
     private static SecretKeyFactory keyFactory;
     private static Cipher cipher;

     public static String encrypt( String unencryptedString, String encryptionKey ) throws Exception
     {
          if ( unencryptedString == null || unencryptedString.trim().length() == 0 )
                    throw new IllegalArgumentException(
                              "unencrypted string was null or empty" );
          if ( encryptionKey == null )
                    throw new IllegalArgumentException( "encryption key was null" );
          if ( encryptionKey.trim().length() < 24 )
                    throw new IllegalArgumentException(
                              "encryption key was less than 24 characters" );

          try
          {

               byte[] keyAsBytes = encryptionKey.getBytes("UTF-8");

    keySpec = new DESedeKeySpec( keyAsBytes );

               keyFactory = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance( "DESede" );
               cipher = Cipher.getInstance( "DESede" );

               SecretKey key = keyFactory.generateSecret( keySpec );
               cipher.init( Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, key );
               byte[] cleartext = unencryptedString.getBytes("UTF-8");
               byte[] ciphertext = cipher.doFinal( cleartext );

      BASE64Encoder base64encoder = new BASE64Encoder();
               return base64encoder.encode( ciphertext );
               //return new String(ciphertext,"UTF-8");
          }
          catch (InvalidKeyException e)
          {
               throw new Exception( e );
          }
          catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e)
          {
               throw new Exception( e );
          }
          catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
          {
               throw new Exception( e );
          }
          catch (NoSuchPaddingException  e)
          {
               throw new Exception( e );
          }
          catch (Exception e)
          {
               throw new Exception( e );
          }
     }

Everything I am running into is saying that .NET doesnt support 44-bit passphrases but I know there has to be a way. Can anyone help or shed any light on this? I'd like to finish this application in .net; but it's not looking good