AES-128 output bytes in codeigniter 3.0 - php

According to the codeigniter documentation, the encryption key for an AES-128 MUST be set to 128bits/16bytes (16 characters) random string. I tested my output using var_dump function
(assuming I have set a 16 character key to the config file and already loaded the library)
My code:
$plain_text = 'Hello World';
$encrypted = $this->encryption->encrypt($plain_text);
var_dump($encrypted);
var_dump($this->encryption->decrypt($encrypted));
die();
The output
string(176) (A 176 character encrypted data appears)
string(11) Hello World
Sorry I'm not able to put the exact encrypted data but I believe is doesn't make sense to show it.
I would like to know if the encryption output is perfectly normal output considering its size(176 bytes)

AES is a block cipher so padding is to be expected.
A block cipher (as opposed to a stream cipher) can only operate on a pre-determined size and must pad a smaller plaintext in order reach that size before it can operate on it.
With that said, 176 bytes (11 x 16-byte blocks) is a lot bigger than 11 bytes and my guess is that part of the overhead may be because codeigniter encodes its own information (i.e. structured data such as type of variable, length of string, etc.) before encrypting it.
Since you are able to decrypt the ciphertext using the same key, it's probably not a bug in the implementation and is working as intended, though I can't speak for whether it was implemented properly and securely.

Related

esp32 and php XXTEA strings encryption

I'm using esp32 (Arduino platform not esp-idf) with the "HTTPClient.h" library to send get requests with parameters to my PHP server.
I want to encrypt the parameter values and decrypt them in my PHP code And vice versa (my server sends back JSON data to my esp32).
I tried using the XXTEA protocol with these libraries for PHP, and for esp32.
But the encrypted string won't decrypt properly on PHP.
Example:
When I encrypt "HELLO WORLD" on my esp32 with the key "ENCRYPTION KEY" I get this:
35bd3126715874f741518f4d
And when I decrypt it on PHP it returns blank.
Moreover, when I encrypt it on my PHP server I get this:
T1YNYC4P4R2Y5eCxUqtjuw==
My esp32 sketch looks like this:
#include <xxtea-iot-crypt.h>
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
}
void loop() {
String plaintext = "HELLO WORLD";
// Set the Password
xxtea.setKey("ENCRYPTION KEY");
// Perform Encryption on the Data
Serial.print(F(" Encrypted Data: "));
String result = xxtea.encrypt(plaintext);
Serial.println(result);
// Perform Decryption
Serial.print(F(" Decrypted Data: "));
Serial.println(xxtea.decrypt(result));
delay(2000);
}
My PHP code looks like this:
require_once('xxtea.php');
$str = "HELLO WORLD"
$key = "ENCRYPTION KEY";
$encrypt_data = xxtea_encrypt($str, $key);
error_log($encrypt_data);
Is there a way to have an encrypted strings communication between PHP and esp32?
Thanks in advance.
This problem may result from inputs being of different data type, since no current XXTEA implementation seems to do any type or range checking.
Or it could be due to different endian behavior of the two computers involved, since binary is typically stored as an array of words constructed from bytes.
Or it could be due to lack of official or standard reference examples for correct encryption of a specific string and key. In the absence of reference examples (using either hexadecimal or base64 conversion of the binary encryption result) there is no way to tell whether an implementation of encryption is correct, even if its results decrypt correctly using a corresponding decryption implementation.
ADDED:
I think I've found one compatibility problem in the published code for XXTEA. It may be worth taking some space here to discuss it.
Specifically, the problem is that different implementations create different results for encrypting the same plaintext and key.
Discussion:
This problem results from the addition of the length of the plaintext as the last element of the array of longs. While this solves the problem of plaintext that has a length that is not a multiple of 4, it generates a different encrypted value than is generated by the JavaScript implementation.
If you insert "$w=false;" at the start of the long2str and str2long functions, the encrypted value for the PHP implementation becomes the same as the JavaScript implementation, but the decrypted value has garbage at the end.
Here are some test case results with this change:
PHP:
text: >This is an example. !##$%^&*(){}[]:;<
Base64: PlRoaXMgaXMgYW4gZXhhbXBsZS4gIUAjJCVeJiooKXt9W106Ozw=
key: 8GmZWww5T97jb39W
encrypt: sIubYrII6jVXvMikX1oQivyOXC07bV1CoC81ZswcCV4tkg5CnrTtqQ==
decrypt: >This is an example. !##$%^&*(){}[]:;<��
Note: there are two UTF-8 question-mark characters at the end of the "decrypt" line.
JavaScript:
text: >This is an example. !##$%^&*(){}[]:;<
Base64: PlRoaXMgaXMgYW4gZXhhbXBsZS4gIUAjJCVeJiooKXt9W106Ozw=
key: 8GmZWww5T97jb39W
encrypt: sIubYrII6jVXvMikX1oQivyOXC07bV1CoC81ZswcCV4tkg5CnrTtqQ==
decrypt: >This is an example. !##$%^&*(){}[]:;<
The reason there is no garbage in the JavaScript implementation even though it does not save the length of the plaintext is given in a comment there: "note running off the end of the string generates nulls since bitwise operators treat NaN as 0". In other words, the generated string is padded with NULs that are never seen, even though JavaScript, like PHP, can include NULs in strings because it stores the length separately.
I don't have an opinion about which approach is best, but one should be chosen for all implementations.
The reason that there should be a standard for the result of encryption (regardless of whether the binary is converted to hex or to base64 for safe transit) is that one might want to use, say, PHP for encoding but JavaScript for decoding, depending on which languages are natural to use at two locations. After all, encryption is most often used to communicate between two locations, and the language used at the target location might not even be known.
Why not using the wificlientsecure library? Works great on the esp32.

encryption result differs in PHP and Node.js

I'm encrypting the string "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" (a 16 byte UTF8 string) using AES 128 CBC with a blank iv and key (16 0's) and getting different results
in PHP:
echo base64_encode(mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128,pack("H*", "00000000000000000000000000000000"),"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa",MCRYPT_MODE_CBC,pack("H*", "00000000000000000000000000000000")))
returns "kmwP6gWv1l9ZMdKanGs/nA=="
in Node.js:
let cipher = require('crypto').createCipheriv('aes-128-cbc',Buffer.alloc(16),Buffer.alloc(16))
console.log(cipher.update('aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa','utf8','base64') + cipher.final('base64'))
returns "kmwP6gWv1l9ZMdKanGs/nHeUidae8Z4dK0HU7p2z+1c="
the first bit (bolded) is identical to PHP, but the PHP value has an extra 'A=' and then Node value has a whole extra 'HeUidae8Z4dK0HU7p2z+1c'
I'll admit that I'm pretty shaky on what's going on here - what am I missing here?
edit ... but not so shaky that I don't understand that what I'm doing here isn't particularly secure. Don't worry about whether this is the 'right' way to do encryption - please focus on the fact that the results ought to line up.
edit2 - I can, however, get close using hex rather than base64 -
PHP: 926c0fea05afd65f5931d29a9c6b3f9c
Node: 926c0fea05afd65f5931d29a9c6b3f9c779489d69ef19e1d2b41d4ee9db3fb57
the second chunk of Node hex is returned by the .final method, and I don't understand what it's for.
AES works on a block size of 16 bytes. You are encrypting the string "hello world", which is 11 bytes long in UTF8. Thus, padding is used to increase the length of your string to 16 bytes.
Node, and as it should, uses PKCS5 Padding to pad your plain-text to 16 bytes and then encrypts it.
mcrypt, as it shouldn't, uses zero bytes to pad your plain-text. mcrypt is deprecated and has been abandoned for a decade.
Because your two padding schemes are different, the plain-text is actually different before we even get to the point where we apply AES.
My advice: use the openssl_* functions in PHP instead. And don't use a static IV. Using a static IV makes your program vulnerable to some of the same vulnerabilities as ECB mode, which is not good!

Using phpseclib AES to encrypt string

Ok so here's the sample code from the page http://phpseclib.sourceforge.net/crypt/examples.html
<?php
include('Crypt/AES.php');
include('Crypt/Random.php');
$cipher = new Crypt_AES(); // could use CRYPT_AES_MODE_CBC
// keys are null-padded to the closest valid size
// longer than the longest key and it's truncated
//$cipher->setKeyLength(128);
$cipher->setKey('abcdefghijklmnop');
// the IV defaults to all-NULLs if not explicitly defined
$cipher->setIV(crypt_random_string($cipher->getBlockLength() >> 3));
$size = 10 * 1024;
$plaintext = str_repeat('a', $size);
echo $cipher->decrypt($cipher->encrypt($plaintext));
?>
Before anything, why is the line //$cipher->setKeyLength(128); is being commented out?
And if I want to set my key to '1234568790', is there anything I should do? Because it's much shorter than they length of the key in the example above (abcdefghijklmnop).
And finally if the plaintext that I want to encrypt is short, something like "my name is james bond", is there anything extra that I should do? Because from the code above, it seems the plaintext's length should be 10 x 1024. (Why is that?)
Before anything, why is the line //$cipher->setKeyLength(128); is being commented out?
Say you pass a 17 byte key to phpseclib via setKey. What do you suppose ought to happen? In the 1.0 and 2.0 versions if setKeyLength isn't called then the key is null-padded to 24 bytes (eg. 192-bits). But if setKeyLength is called it'll be truncated to 16 bytes. In the master branch (which, as I understand it, will eventually become the 3.0 branch), an exception is thrown if the key length isn't valid. In that version it may still be desirable to call setKeyLength if, for example, if you want to set the key length as being 128-bits in one part of the code and then actually set the key in another part of the code. ie. you could do the length checking or phpseclib could do the length checking.
And if I want to set my key to '1234568790', is there anything I should do? Because it's much shorter than they length of the key in the example above (abcdefghijklmnop).
1234568790 isn't technically long enough to be a valid key. It's 80 bytes long. The smallest key AES supports is 128-bits. Maybe you should consider doing something like setPassword('1234568790') instead of setKey('1234568790'). setPassword will use a key-derivation function to generate a key from the password.
In phpseclib 1.0 and 2.0 setKey will, none-the-less, accept that as a key. It'll just null pad the key. The master branch otoh will throw an exception since the key isn't actually long enough.
And finally if the plaintext that I want to encrypt is short, something like "my name is james bond", is there anything extra that I should do? Because from the code above, it seems the plaintext's length should be 10 x 1024. (Why is that?)
10 * 1024 is just an example. phpseclib, by default, will use PKCS7 padding to make strings long enough. eg. your string is 21 bytes long (if I counted correctly). So if you call $cipher->encrypt('my name is james bond') then chr(11) will be appending to the plaintext 11 times, by phpseclib and then the string will be encrypted. This is because block algorithms need to have the the plaintext be a multiple of the block length. So the ciphertext will be 32 bytes long. When you then call $cipher->decrypt('...') you'll get the orig 21-byte string back. I could elaborate further on PKCS7 padding, but I think I've answered your immediate question.

Decrypting the .ASPXAUTH Cookie WITH protection=validation

For quite sometime I've been trying to decipher the ASP .ASPXAUTH cookie and decrypt it using PHP. My reasons are huge and I need to do this, there is no alternative. In PHP so far I have successfully managed to read the data from this cookie, but I cannot seem to do it while it is encrypted. Anyway, here it goes...
First you need to alter your servers Web.config file (protection needs to be set to Validation):
<authentication mode="None">
<forms name=".ASPXAUTH" protection="Validation" cookieless="UseCookies" timeout="10080" enableCrossAppRedirects="true"/>
</authentication>
Then in a PHP script on the same domain, you can do the following to read the data, this is a very basic example, but is proof:
$authCookie = $_COOKIE['_ASPXAUTH'];
echo 'ASPXAUTH: '.$authCookie.'<br />'."\n";//This outputs your plaintext hex cookie
$packed = pack("H*",$authCookie);
$packed_exp = explode("\0",$packed);//This will separate your data using NULL
$random_bytes = array_shift($packed_exp);//This will shift off the random bytes
echo print_r($packed_exp,TRUE); //This will return your cookies data without the random bytes
This breaks down the cookie, or at least the unencrypted data:
Now that I know I can get the data, I removed the 'protection="validation"' string from my Web.config and I tried to decrypt it using PHP mcrypt. I have tried countless methods, but here is a promising example (which fails)...
define('ASP_DECRYPT_KEY','0BC95D748C57F6162519C165E0C5DEB69EA1145676F453AB93DA9645B067DFB8');//This is a decryption key found in my Machine.config file (please note this is forged for example)
$iv = mcrypt_create_iv(mcrypt_get_iv_size(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC), MCRYPT_RAND);
$decrypted = mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128, ASP_DECRYPT_KEY, $authCookie, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, $iv);//$authCookie is the pack()'d cookie data
This however fails. I've tried variations of IV with all zeros # 16 bytes. I've tried different Rijndael sizes (128 vs 256). I've tried base64_decode()ing, nothing seems to work. I've found this stackoverflow post here and started using variations of the key/iv that are made using sha256, but that isn't really working either.
Anybody have a clue what I should do?
I don't know how encryption is made in .NET AuthCookies, but I can try to answer.
Assuming the encryption occurs in AES CBC-IV mode, with randomly generated IVs, you need to first find out where the IV is.
The code snippet you show cannot work, as you are generating a random IV (which will be incorrect). That being said, even if you get the IV wrong, in CBC mode you will only have the first 16 bytes of your decrypted ciphertext "garbled" and the rest will decrypt properly - you can use this as a test to know if you're doing the rest correctly. In practice when using random IVs, it's very likely that it's prepended to the ciphertext. To check if this correct, you can try to check if len(ciphertext) = len(plaintext) + 16. This would mean that most likely the first 16 bytes are your IV (and therefore it should be removed from the ciphertext before attempting to decrypt it).
Also on your code snippet, it seems you are using the key as an ascii-string, whereas it should be a byte array. Try:
define('ASP_DECRYPT_KEY',hex2bin('0BC95D748C57F6162519C165E0C5DEB69EA1145676F453AB93DA9645B067DFB8'));
Also, this seems to be a 32 byte key, so you need to use AES-256. I don't know how the authcookie looks like, but if it's base64 encoded, you also need to decode it first obviously.
Hope this helps!
Note: I don't recomment doing this for important production code, however - because there are many things that can go wrong if you try to implement even your own decryption routine as you are doing here. In particular, I would guess there should be a MAC tag somewhere that you have to check before attempting decryption, but there are many other things that can go wrong implementing your own crypto.
I understand this may not have been possible for the OP but for other people heading down this route here is a simple alternative.
Create a .net web service with a method like:
public FormsAuthenticationTicket DecryptFormsAuthCookie(string ticket)
{
return FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(ticket);
}
Pass cookie to web service from PHP:
$authCookie = $_COOKIE['.ASPXAUTH'];
$soapClient = new SoapClient("http://localhost/Service1.svc?wsdl");
$params= array(
"ticket" => $authCookie
);
$result = $soapClient->DecryptFormsAuthCookie($params);
I know what a pain is to decrypt in PHP something encrypted in .NET and vice versa.
I had to end up coding myself the Rijndael algorithm ( translated it from another language ).
Here is the link to the source code of the algorithm: http://pastebin.com/EnCJBLSY
At the end of the source code there is some usage example.
But on .NET, you should use zero padding when encrypting. Also test it with ECB mode, I'm not sure if CBC works.
Good luck and hope it helps
edit: the algorithm returns the hexadecimal string when encrypts, and also expects hexadecimal string when decrypting.

Which Blowfish algorithm is the most 'correct'?

I'm running Windows Server 2k8 (maybe that's half the problem?) Anyway, I'm getting different values out of different Blowfish modules in various languages. Is there one which can be relied upon as the standard?
For the following examples, assume the key is password and the plaintext 12345678.
a. The Online Encrypt Tool with Algorithm set to Blowfish mode ECB and Base64 Encode the output checked gives 2mADZkZR0VM=. I've been using this a my reference point, wise or otherwise.
b. The following Perl code uses Crypt::ECB and MIME::Base64
use MIME::Base64;
use Crypt::ECB;
$crypt = Crypt::ECB->new;
$crypt->padding(PADDING_NONE);
$crypt->cipher('Blowfish') || die $crypt->errstring;
$crypt->key('password');
$enc = $crypt->encrypt("12345678");
print encode_base64($enc);
This outputs 2mADZkZR0VM= with PADDING_NONE (which compares well with 'a.' above). However, when padding is set to PADDING_AUTO it outputs 2mADZkZR0VOZ5o+S6D3OZw== which is, in my mind at least, a bug as the plaintext is 8 characters long and in no need of padding.
c. If I use Crypt::Blowfish as below
#! c:\perl\bin
use Crypt::Blowfish;
use MIME::Base64;
my $key;
my $plaintext;
$key = "password";
$plaintext = "12345678";
my $cipher = new Crypt::Blowfish $key;
my $ciphertext = $cipher->encrypt($plaintext);
my $encoded = encode_base64( $ciphertext );
print $encoded;
then I get 2mADZkZR0VM= which matches 'a.' above. Trouble with this module though is that one has to segment things into 8 byte chunks for encoding; it has no chunker of its own.
d. If I use the source at http://linux.die.net/man/3/bf_ecb_encrypt (which I did for a recent PHP ext project) then I get the same answer as 'a.'. I'm inclined to trust this code the most as it's in use in SSLeay and OpenSSL.
e. The BlowfishEx.EXE in DI Management's Blowfish: a Visual Basic version with PKCS#5 padding gives 2mADZkZR0VOZ5o+S6D3OZw== which is the same as the Crypt::ECB results with PADDING_AUTO. With Padding set to None I get 2mADZkZR0VM= which matches 'a.'
I've partly answered my own question writing this: looks like I just have to modify DI Management's code for the VB6 project. And maybe suggest the same to the writer of Crypt::ECB.
But the question remains: is there a trustworthy blowfish reference platform?
Your problem doesn't seem to be with whether they implement the Blowfish algorithm correctly. In the "no padding" variant, they all seem to produce identical results.
That leaves a question of whether an 8-byte input should be padded at all. The answer to this is pretty simple: PKCS #7 requires that there is always at least one byte of padding added to the input. The reason for this is simple: on the receiving end, there needs to be an unambiguous way to remove the padding. In the case of PKCS#7, the value of the padding bytes is always the number of bytes of padding that needs to be stripped off by the recipient.
So, when you receive material that's been padded with PKCS7, you decrypt the block, then look at the last byte in the decrypted output, and remove that many bytes from the block. Without a block of padding on the end, the receiver would normally look at the last byte of actual data, and whatever value that byte happened to contain, strip off that many bytes (though it should probably tell you there's a problem if the number is larger than 8). In any case, to assure correct operation, there must always be at least one byte of padding. In your case, that means the input gets expanded out to 16 bytes instead of 8.

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