Best Way to Use PHP to Encrypt and Decrypt Passwords

Best way to use PHP to encrypt and decrypt passwords?

You should not encrypt passwords, instead you should hash them using an algorithm like bcrypt. This answer explains how to properly implement password hashing in PHP. Still, here is how you would encrypt/decrypt:

$key = 'password to (en/de)crypt';
$string = ' string to be encrypted '; // note the spaces

To Encrypt:

$iv = mcrypt_create_iv(
    mcrypt_get_iv_size(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC),
    MCRYPT_DEV_URANDOM
);

$encrypted = base64_encode(
    $iv .
    mcrypt_encrypt(
        MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128,
        hash('sha256', $key, true),
        $string,
        MCRYPT_MODE_CBC,
        $iv
    )
);

To Decrypt:

$data = base64_decode($encrypted);
$iv = substr($data, 0, mcrypt_get_iv_size(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC));

$decrypted = rtrim(
    mcrypt_decrypt(
        MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128,
        hash('sha256', $key, true),
        substr($data, mcrypt_get_iv_size(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC)),
        MCRYPT_MODE_CBC,
        $iv
    ),
    "\0"
);

Warning: The above example encrypts information, but it does not authenticate the ciphertext to prevent tampering. You should not rely on unauthenticated encryption for security, especially since the code as provided is vulnerable to padding oracle attacks.

Perfect way to encrypt & decrypt password, files in PHP?

Checkout this well documented article A reversible password encryption routine for PHP, intended for those PHP developers who want a password encryption routine that is reversible.

Even though this class is intended for password encryption, you can use it for encryption/decryption of any text.

function encryption_class() {
    $this->errors = array();

    // Each of these two strings must contain the same characters, but in a different order.
    // Use only printable characters from the ASCII table.
    // Do not use single quote, double quote or backslash as these have special meanings in PHP.
    // Each character can only appear once in each string.
    $this->scramble1 = '! #$%&()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~';
    $this->scramble2 = 'f^jAE]okIOzU[2&q1{3`h5w_794p@6s8?BgP>dFV=m D<TcS%Ze|r:lGK/uCy.Jx)HiQ!#$~(;Lt-R}Ma,NvW+Ynb*0X';

    if (strlen($this->scramble1) <> strlen($this->scramble2)) {
        trigger_error('** SCRAMBLE1 is not same length as SCRAMBLE2 **', E_USER_ERROR);
    } // if

    $this->adj = 1.75;  // this value is added to the rolling fudgefactors
    $this->mod = 3;     // if divisible by this the adjustment is made negative
}

Caution:

If you are using PHP version >= 5.3.3, then you have to change the class name from encryption_class to __construct

Reason:

As of PHP 5.3.3, methods with the same name as the last element of a namespaced class name will no longer be treated as constructor.

Usage:

$crypt = new encryption_class();

$crypt->setAdjustment(1.75); // 1st adjustment value (optional)
$crypt->setModulus(3); // 2nd adjustment value (optional)

/**
 * 
 * @param string $key - Your encryption key
 * @param string $sourceText - The source text to be encrypted
 * @param integer $encLen - positive integer indicating the minimum length of encrypted text
 * @return string - encrypted text
 */
$encrypt_result = $crypt->encrypt($key, $sourceText, $encLen);

/**
 * 
 * @param string $key - Your encryption key (same used for encryption)
 * @param string $encrypt_result - The text to be decrypted
 * @return string - decrypted text
 */
$decrypt_result = $crypt->decrypt($key, $encrypt_result);

Update:

Above class is not intended for encrypting files, but you can!!!

base64_encode your source text (file contents)
for actual encryption, apply above enc/dec class over base64-encoded text
for decryption, apply above enc/dec class over actually encrypted text
base64_decode will give you the actual file contents (you can save a copy of file with this content)

I've encrypted an image, decrypted back and saved to a new file!!! checkout the code.

//class for encrypt/decrypt routines 
require 'class.encryption.php';

//configuring your security levels
$key = 'This is my secret key; with symbols (@$^*&<?>/!#_+), cool eh?!!! :)';
$adjustment = 1.75;
$modulus = 2;

//customizing
$sourceFileName = 'source-image.png';
$destFileName = 'dest-image.png';
$minSpecifiedLength = 512;

//base64 encoding file contents, to get all characters in our range
//binary too!!!
$sourceText = base64_encode(file_get_contents($sourceFileName));

$crypt = new encryption_class();
$crypt->setAdjustment($adjustment); //optional
$crypt->setModulus($modulus); //optional

//encrypted text
$encrypt_result = $crypt->encrypt($key, $sourceText, $minSpecifiedLength);

//receive initial file contents after decryption
$decrypt_result = base64_decode($crypt->decrypt($key, $encrypt_result));

//save as new file!!!
file_put_contents($destFileName, $decrypt_result);

How do you Encrypt and Decrypt a PHP String?

Updated

PHP 7 ready version. It uses openssl_encrypt function from PHP OpenSSL Library.

class Openssl_EncryptDecrypt {
    function encrypt ($pure_string, $encryption_key) {
        $cipher     = 'AES-256-CBC';
        $options    = OPENSSL_RAW_DATA;
        $hash_algo  = 'sha256';
        $sha2len    = 32;
        $ivlen = openssl_cipher_iv_length($cipher);
        $iv = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes($ivlen);
        $ciphertext_raw = openssl_encrypt($pure_string, $cipher, $encryption_key, $options, $iv);
        $hmac = hash_hmac($hash_algo, $ciphertext_raw, $encryption_key, true);
        return $iv.$hmac.$ciphertext_raw;
    }
    function decrypt ($encrypted_string, $encryption_key) {
        $cipher     = 'AES-256-CBC';
        $options    = OPENSSL_RAW_DATA;
        $hash_algo  = 'sha256';
        $sha2len    = 32;
        $ivlen = openssl_cipher_iv_length($cipher);
        $iv = substr($encrypted_string, 0, $ivlen);
        $hmac = substr($encrypted_string, $ivlen, $sha2len);
        $ciphertext_raw = substr($encrypted_string, $ivlen+$sha2len);
        $original_plaintext = openssl_decrypt($ciphertext_raw, $cipher, $encryption_key, $options, $iv);
        $calcmac = hash_hmac($hash_algo, $ciphertext_raw, $encryption_key, true);
        if(function_exists('hash_equals')) {
            if (hash_equals($hmac, $calcmac)) return $original_plaintext;
        } else {
            if ($this->hash_equals_custom($hmac, $calcmac)) return $original_plaintext;
        }
    }
    /**
     * (Optional)
     * hash_equals() function polyfilling.
     * PHP 5.6+ timing attack safe comparison
     */
    function hash_equals_custom($knownString, $userString) {
        if (function_exists('mb_strlen')) {
            $kLen = mb_strlen($knownString, '8bit');
            $uLen = mb_strlen($userString, '8bit');
        } else {
            $kLen = strlen($knownString);
            $uLen = strlen($userString);
        }
        if ($kLen !== $uLen) {
            return false;
        }
        $result = 0;
        for ($i = 0; $i < $kLen; $i++) {
            $result |= (ord($knownString[$i]) ^ ord($userString[$i]));
        }
        return 0 === $result;
    }
}

define('ENCRYPTION_KEY', '__^%&Q@$&*!@#$%^&*^__');
$string = "This is the original string!";

$OpensslEncryption = new Openssl_EncryptDecrypt;
$encrypted = $OpensslEncryption->encrypt($string, ENCRYPTION_KEY);
$decrypted = $OpensslEncryption->decrypt($encrypted, ENCRYPTION_KEY);

Simplest two-way encryption using PHP

Edited:

You should really be using openssl_encrypt() & openssl_decrypt()

As Scott says, Mcrypt is not a good idea as it has not been updated since 2007.

There is even an RFC to remove Mcrypt from PHP - https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mcrypt-viking-funeral

How to encrypt/decrypt data in php?

Foreword

Starting with your table definition:

- UserID
- Fname
- Lname
- Email
- Password
- IV

Here are the changes:

The fields Fname, Lname and Email will be encrypted using a symmetric cipher, provided by OpenSSL,
The IV field will store the initialisation vector used for encryption. The storage requirements depend on the cipher and mode used; more about this later.
The Password field will be hashed using a one-way password hash,

Encryption

Cipher and mode

Choosing the best encryption cipher and mode is beyond the scope of this answer, but the final choice affects the size of both the encryption key and initialisation vector; for this post we will be using AES-256-CBC which has a fixed block size of 16 bytes and a key size of either 16, 24 or 32 bytes.

Encryption key

A good encryption key is a binary blob that's generated from a reliable random number generator. The following example would be recommended (>= 5.3):

$key_size = 32; // 256 bits
$encryption_key = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes($key_size, $strong);
// $strong will be true if the key is crypto safe

This can be done once or multiple times (if you wish to create a chain of encryption keys). Keep these as private as possible.

The initialisation vector adds randomness to the encryption and required for CBC mode. These values should be ideally be used only once (technically once per encryption key), so an update to any part of a row should regenerate it.

A function is provided to help you generate the IV:

$iv_size = 16; // 128 bits
$iv = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes($iv_size, $strong);

Example

Let's encrypt the name field, using the earlier $encryption_key and $iv; to do this, we have to pad our data to the block size:

function pkcs7_pad($data, $size)
{
    $length = $size - strlen($data) % $size;
    return $data . str_repeat(chr($length), $length);
}

$name = 'Jack';
$enc_name = openssl_encrypt(
    pkcs7_pad($name, 16), // padded data
    'AES-256-CBC',        // cipher and mode
    $encryption_key,      // secret key
    0,                    // options (not used)
    $iv                   // initialisation vector
);

Storage requirements

The encrypted output, like the IV, is binary; storing these values in a database can be accomplished by using designated column types such as BINARY or VARBINARY.

The output value, like the IV, is binary; to store those values in MySQL, consider using BINARY or VARBINARY columns. If this is not an option, you can also convert the binary data into a textual representation using base64_encode() or bin2hex(), doing so requires between 33% to 100% more storage space.

Decryption

Decryption of the stored values is similar:

function pkcs7_unpad($data)
{
    return substr($data, 0, -ord($data[strlen($data) - 1]));
}

$row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC); // read from database result
// $enc_name = base64_decode($row['Name']);
// $enc_name = hex2bin($row['Name']);
$enc_name = $row['Name'];
// $iv = base64_decode($row['IV']);
// $iv = hex2bin($row['IV']);
$iv = $row['IV'];

$name = pkcs7_unpad(openssl_decrypt(
    $enc_name,
    'AES-256-CBC',
    $encryption_key,
    0,
    $iv
));

Authenticated encryption

You can further improve the integrity of the generated cipher text by appending a signature that's generated from a secret key (different from the encryption key) and the cipher text. Before the cipher text is decrypted, the signature is first verified (preferably with a constant-time comparison method).

Example

// generate once, keep safe
$auth_key = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(32, $strong);

// authentication
$auth = hash_hmac('sha256', $enc_name, $auth_key, true);
$auth_enc_name = $auth . $enc_name;

// verification
$auth = substr($auth_enc_name, 0, 32);
$enc_name = substr($auth_enc_name, 32);
$actual_auth = hash_hmac('sha256', $enc_name, $auth_key, true);

if (hash_equals($auth, $actual_auth)) {
    // perform decryption
}

Hashing

Storing a reversible password in your database must be avoided as much as possible; you only wish to verify the password rather than knowing its contents. If a user loses their password, it's better to allow them to reset it rather than sending them their original one (make sure that password reset can only be done for a limited time).

Applying a hash function is a one-way operation; afterwards it can be safely used for verification without revealing the original data; for passwords, a brute force method is a feasible approach to uncover it due to its relatively short length and poor password choices of many people.

Hashing algorithms such as MD5 or SHA1 were made to verify file contents against a known hash value. They're greatly optimized to make this verification as fast as possible while still being accurate. Given their relatively limited output space it was easy to build a database with known passwords and their respective hash outputs, the rainbow tables.

Adding a salt to the password before hashing it would render a rainbow table useless, but recent hardware advancements made brute force lookups a viable approach. That's why you need a hashing algorithm that's deliberately slow and simply impossible to optimize. It should also be able to increase the load for faster hardware without affecting the ability to verify existing password hashes to make it future proof.

Currently there are two popular choices available:

PBKDF2 (Password Based Key Derivation Function v2)
bcrypt (aka Blowfish)

This answer will use an example with bcrypt.

Generation

A password hash can be generated like this:

$password = 'my password';
$random = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(18);
$salt = sprintf('$2y$%02d$%s',
    13, // 2^n cost factor
    substr(strtr(base64_encode($random), '+', '.'), 0, 22)
);

$hash = crypt($password, $salt);

The salt is generated with openssl_random_pseudo_bytes() to form a random blob of data which is then run through base64_encode() and strtr() to match the required alphabet of [A-Za-z0-9/.].

The crypt() function performs the hashing based on the algorithm ( $2y$ for Blowfish), the cost factor (a factor of 13 takes roughly 0.40s on a 3GHz machine) and the salt of 22 characters.

Validation

Once you have fetched the row containing the user information, you validate the password in this manner:

$given_password = $_POST['password']; // the submitted password
$db_hash = $row['Password']; // field with the password hash

$given_hash = crypt($given_password, $db_hash);

if (isEqual($given_hash, $db_hash)) {
    // user password verified
}

// constant time string compare
function isEqual($str1, $str2)
{
    $n1 = strlen($str1);
    if (strlen($str2) != $n1) {
        return false;
    }
    for ($i = 0, $diff = 0; $i != $n1; ++$i) {
        $diff |= ord($str1[$i]) ^ ord($str2[$i]);
    }
    return !$diff;
}

To verify a password, you call crypt() again but you pass the previously calculated hash as the salt value. The return value yields the same hash if the given password matches the hash. To verify the hash, it's often recommended to use a constant-time comparison function to avoid timing attacks.

Password hashing with PHP 5.5

PHP 5.5 introduced the password hashing functions that you can use to simplify the above method of hashing:

$hash = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_BCRYPT, ['cost' => 13]);

And verifying:

if (password_verify($given_password, $db_hash)) {
    // password valid
}

See also: password_hash(), password_verify()

Best way encrypt password php (in 2017)

The password hash function in combination with password verify

https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.password-hash.php
https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.password-verify.php

Encrypting and decrypting passwords with php

If you want some sort of notification to appear without the page reloading, you need to use AJAX.

I think the best way to do what your asking is make a database and set a column that gives an id of 0 or 1. If the user clicks it then it sets that id=1. You can then check whether id = 1, and display an message using AJAX.

Look here for more info
http://api.jquery.com/jquery.ajax/

How can you ensure that the password you stored is well encrypted using php and mySql?

Don't save encrypted password, instead store a hashed version.

Use an algorithm such as PBKDF2 (Password Based Key Derivation Function) with a random salt and a reasonably large iteration count to slow down the hashing. Then when you want to check a password run the password through the same hash function and verify the result matches the saved hash.

Note: save the salt and iteration count along with the resultant hash, none of these are need to be secret.

PHP AES encrypt / decrypt

$sDecrypted and $sEncrypted were undefined in your code. See a solution that works (but is not secure!):

STOP!

This example is insecure! Do not use it!

$Pass = "Passwort";
$Clear = "Klartext";        

$crypted = fnEncrypt($Clear, $Pass);
echo "Encrypred: ".$crypted."</br>";

$newClear = fnDecrypt($crypted, $Pass);
echo "Decrypred: ".$newClear."</br>";        

function fnEncrypt($sValue, $sSecretKey)
{
    return rtrim(
        base64_encode(
            mcrypt_encrypt(
                MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256,
                $sSecretKey, $sValue, 
                MCRYPT_MODE_ECB, 
                mcrypt_create_iv(
                    mcrypt_get_iv_size(
                        MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, 
                        MCRYPT_MODE_ECB
                    ), 
                    MCRYPT_RAND)
                )
            ), "\0"
        );
}

function fnDecrypt($sValue, $sSecretKey)
{
    return rtrim(
        mcrypt_decrypt(
            MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, 
            $sSecretKey, 
            base64_decode($sValue), 
            MCRYPT_MODE_ECB,
            mcrypt_create_iv(
                mcrypt_get_iv_size(
                    MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256,
                    MCRYPT_MODE_ECB
                ), 
                MCRYPT_RAND
            )
        ), "\0"
    );
}

But there are other problems in this code which make it insecure, in particular the use of ECB (which is not an encryption mode, only a building block on top of which encryption modes can be defined). See Fab Sa's answer for a quick fix of the worst problems and Scott's answer for how to do this right.

Best Way to Use PHP to Encrypt and Decrypt Passwords