This is a library for encrypting data with a key or password in PHP. It requires PHP 5.6 or newer and OpenSSL 1.0.1 or newer. We recommend using a version of PHP that still has security support, which at the time of writing means PHP 7.1 or later. Using this library with an unsupported version of PHP could lead to security vulnerabilities.
The current version of php-encryption is v2.2.1. This library is expected to
remain stable and supported by its authors with security and bugfixes until at
least January 1st, 2021.
The library is a joint effort between Taylor Hornby and Scott Arciszewski as well as numerous open-source contributors.
What separates this library from other PHP encryption libraries is, firstly, that it is secure. The authors used to encounter insecure PHP encryption code on a daily basis, so they created this library to bring more security to the ecosystem. Secondly, this library is "difficult to misuse." Like libsodium, its API is designed to be easy to use in a secure way and hard to use in an insecure way.
This library requires no special dependencies except for PHP 5.6 or newer with the OpenSSL extensions (version 1.0.1 or later) enabled (this is the default). It uses random_compat, which is bundled in with this library so that your users will not need to follow any special installation steps.
Start with the Tutorial. You can find instructions for obtaining this library's code securely in the Installing and Verifying documentation.
After you've read the tutorial and got the code, refer to the formal documentation for each of the classes this library provides:
If you encounter difficulties, see the FAQ answers. The fixes to the most commonly-reported problems are explained there.
If you're a cryptographer and want to understand the nitty-gritty details of how this library works, look at the Cryptography Details documentation.
If you're interested in contributing to this library, see the Internal Developer Documentation.
This library is intended for server-side PHP software that needs to encrypt data at rest. If you are building software that needs to encrypt client-side, or building a system that requires cross-platform encryption/decryption support, we strongly recommend using libsodium instead.
If the documentation is not enough for you to understand how to use this library, then you can look at an example project that uses this library:
This code has not been subjected to a formal, paid, security audit. However, it has received lots of review from members of the PHP security community, and the authors are experienced with cryptography. In all likelihood, you are safer using this library than almost any other encryption library for PHP.
If you use this library as a part of your business and would like to help fund a formal audit, please contact Taylor Hornby.
The GnuPG public key used to sign releases is available in dist/signingkey.asc. Its fingerprint is:
2FA6 1D8D 99B9 2658 6BAC 3D53 385E E055 A129 1538
You can verify it against Taylor Hornby's contact page and twitter.