Encryption using PHP and OpenSSL ~ Tech Blog

Monday 16 July 2018

Encryption using PHP and OpenSSL

In this post we will see how to encrypt and decrypt data using PHP OpenSSL. We will be using asymmetric (public/private key) encryption. In this encryption a user generates a pair of public / private keys and gives the public key to anyone who wants to send the data. The sender of the data will encrypt the data using the public key of the receiver. The receiver will then unencrypt the received data using his own private key. The data encrypted using the public key can only be decrypted using the corresponding private key.

The amount of data you can encrypt and the size of the resulting encrypted data are both determined by the size of the key. The size of the encrypted data is the number of bytes in the key (rounded up). So for a 1024-bit key this will be 128 bytes (1024 divided by 8). Even if you were to encrypt a string with a single byte in it, the resulting encrypted data would still be 128 bytes long. The maximum amount of data that can be encrypted is 11 bytes less than this. So for a 1024-bit key, up to 117 bytes can be encrypted.

We cannot encrypt and send large amount of data at once, so we need to divide it into smaller chunks. In the following example we divide the data into multiple chunks before encrypting it and then combine the encrypted data and send it. The receiver then breaks the encrypted data into chuncks and decrypts it.

Generating public / private Keys

We will first need a pair of public / private keys. Here is a sample PHP code to generate the public / private Keys.

<?php

$privateKey = openssl_pkey_new(array(

    'private_key_bits' => 2048,      // Size of Key.

    'private_key_type' => OPENSSL_KEYTYPE_RSA,

));

// Save the private key to private.key file. Never share this file with anyone.

openssl_pkey_export_to_file($privateKey, 'private.key');

// Generate the public key for the private key

$a_key = openssl_pkey_get_details($privateKey);

// Save the public key in public.key file. Send this file to anyone who want to send you the encrypted data.

file_put_contents('public.key', $a_key['key']);

// Free the private Key.

openssl_free_key($privateKey);

The above code will generate a pair of public / private keys. Never share the private key with anyone. Give the public key to anyone who will send you encrypted data.

Encrypting data

Here is the code that can be used to encrypt the data. This code assumes that we already have the recipient’s public key.

<?php

// Data to be sent

$plaintext = 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean eleifend vestibulum nunc sit amet mattis. Nulla at volutpat nulla. Pellentesque sodales vel ligula quis consequat. Suspendisse dapibus dolor nec viverra venenatis. Pellentesque blandit vehicula eleifend. Duis eget fermentum velit. Vivamus varius ut dui vel malesuada. Ut adipiscing est non magna posuere ullamcorper. Proin pretium nibh nec elementum tincidunt. Vestibulum leo urna, porttitor et aliquet id, ornare at nibh. Maecenas placerat justo nunc, varius condimentum diam fringilla sed. Donec auctor tellus vitae justo venenatis, sit amet vulputate felis accumsan. Aenean aliquet bibendum magna, ac adipiscing orci venenatis vitae.';

echo 'Plain text: ' . $plaintext;

// Compress the data to be sent

$plaintext = gzcompress($plaintext);

// Get the public Key of the recipient

$publicKey = openssl_pkey_get_public('file:///path/to/public.key');

$a_key = openssl_pkey_get_details($publicKey);

// Encrypt the data in small chunks and then combine and send it.

$chunkSize = ceil($a_key['bits'] / 8) - 11;

$output = '';

while ($plaintext)

{

    $chunk = substr($plaintext, 0, $chunkSize);

    $plaintext = substr($plaintext, $chunkSize);

    $encrypted = '';

    if (!openssl_public_encrypt($chunk, $encrypted, $publicKey))

    {

        die('Failed to encrypt data');

    }

    $output .= $encrypted;

}

openssl_free_key($publicKey);

// This is the final encrypted data to be sent to the recipient

$encrypted = $output;

Decrypting data

Once a user receives encrypted data using his public key, the user can decrypt it using his own private key. Here is sample code to decrypt the encrypted data.

<?php

// Get the private Key

if (!$privateKey = openssl_pkey_get_private('file:///path/to/private.key'))

{

    die('Private Key failed');

}

$a_key = openssl_pkey_get_details($privateKey);

// Decrypt the data in the small chunks

$chunkSize = ceil($a_key['bits'] / 8);

$output = '';

while ($encrypted)

{

    $chunk = substr($encrypted, 0, $chunkSize);

    $encrypted = substr($encrypted, $chunkSize);

    $decrypted = '';

    if (!openssl_private_decrypt($chunk, $decrypted, $privateKey))

    {

        die('Failed to decrypt data');

    }

    $output .= $decrypted;

}

openssl_free_key($privateKey);

// Uncompress the unencrypted data.

$output = gzuncompress($output);

echo '<br /><br /> Unencrypted Data: ' . $output;

List of all PHP functions for OpenSSL can be found at OpenSSL Functions

Tech Blog

Monday 16 July 2018