mcrypt is deprecated, what is the alternative?

Question

The mcrypt-extension is deprecated will be removed in PHP 7.2 according to the comment posted here. So I am looking for an alternative way to encrypt passwords.

Righ

Answer 1

You should use OpenSSL over mcrypt as it's actively developed and maintained. It provides better security, maintainability and portability. Secondly it performs AES encryption/decryption much faster. It uses PKCS7 padding by default, but you can specify OPENSSL_ZERO_PADDING if you need it. To use with a 32-byte binary key, you can specify aes-256-cbc which is much obvious than MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128.

Here is the code example using Mcrypt:

Unauthenticated AES-256-CBC encryption library written in Mcrypt with PKCS7 padding.

/**
 * This library is unsafe because it does not MAC after encrypting
 */
class UnsafeMcryptAES
{
    const CIPHER = MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128;

    public static function encrypt($message, $key)
    {
        if (mb_strlen($key, '8bit') !== 32) {
            throw new Exception("Needs a 256-bit key!");
        }
        $ivsize = mcrypt_get_iv_size(self::CIPHER);
        $iv = mcrypt_create_iv($ivsize, MCRYPT_DEV_URANDOM);

        // Add PKCS7 Padding
        $block = mcrypt_get_block_size(self::CIPHER);
        $pad = $block - (mb_strlen($message, '8bit') % $block, '8bit');
        $message .= str_repeat(chr($pad), $pad);

        $ciphertext = mcrypt_encrypt(
            MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128,
            $key,
            $message,
            MCRYPT_MODE_CBC,
            $iv
        );

        return $iv . $ciphertext;
    }

    public static function decrypt($message, $key)
    {
        if (mb_strlen($key, '8bit') !== 32) {
            throw new Exception("Needs a 256-bit key!");
        }
        $ivsize = mcrypt_get_iv_size(self::CIPHER);
        $iv = mb_substr($message, 0, $ivsize, '8bit');
        $ciphertext = mb_substr($message, $ivsize, null, '8bit');

        $plaintext = mcrypt_decrypt(
            MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128,
            $key,
            $ciphertext,
            MCRYPT_MODE_CBC,
            $iv
        );

        $len = mb_strlen($plaintext, '8bit');
        $pad = ord($plaintext[$len - 1]);
        if ($pad <= 0 || $pad > $block) {
            // Padding error!
            return false;
        }
        return mb_substr($plaintext, 0, $len - $pad, '8bit');
    }
}

And here is the version written using OpenSSL:

/**
 * This library is unsafe because it does not MAC after encrypting
 */
class UnsafeOpensslAES
{
    const METHOD = 'aes-256-cbc';

    public static function encrypt($message, $key)
    {
        if (mb_strlen($key, '8bit') !== 32) {
            throw new Exception("Needs a 256-bit key!");
        }
        $ivsize = openssl_cipher_iv_length(self::METHOD);
        $iv = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes($ivsize);

        $ciphertext = openssl_encrypt(
            $message,
            self::METHOD,
            $key,
            OPENSSL_RAW_DATA,
            $iv
        );

        return $iv . $ciphertext;
    }

    public static function decrypt($message, $key)
    {
        if (mb_strlen($key, '8bit') !== 32) {
            throw new Exception("Needs a 256-bit key!");
        }
        $ivsize = openssl_cipher_iv_length(self::METHOD);
        $iv = mb_substr($message, 0, $ivsize, '8bit');
        $ciphertext = mb_substr($message, $ivsize, null, '8bit');

        return openssl_decrypt(
            $ciphertext,
            self::METHOD,
            $key,
            OPENSSL_RAW_DATA,
            $iv
        );
    }
}

Source: If You're Typing the Word MCRYPT Into Your PHP Code, You're Doing It Wrong.