Question

Am trying to decrypt a key encrypted by Java Triple DES function using PHP mcrypt function but with no luck. Find below the java code

import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;


public class Encrypt3DES {

     private byte[] key;
     private byte[] initializationVector;

    public Encrypt3DES(){

    }

    public String encryptText(String plainText, String key) throws Exception{

         //----  Use specified 3DES key and IV from other source --------------
        byte[] plaintext = plainText.getBytes();
        byte[] myIV = key.getBytes();
        byte[] tdesKeyData = {(byte)0xA2, (byte)0x15, (byte)0x37, (byte)0x08, (byte)0xCA, (byte)0x62,
        (byte)0xC1, (byte)0xD2, (byte)0xF7, (byte)0xF1, (byte)0x93, (byte)0xDF,
        (byte)0xD2, (byte)0x15, (byte)0x4F, (byte)0x79, (byte)0x06, (byte)0x67,
        (byte)0x7A, (byte)0x82, (byte)0x94, (byte)0x16, (byte)0x32, (byte)0x95};

        Cipher c3des = Cipher.getInstance("DESede/CBC/PKCS5Padding");
        SecretKeySpec    myKey = new SecretKeySpec(tdesKeyData, "DESede");
        IvParameterSpec ivspec = new IvParameterSpec(myIV);
           c3des.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, myKey, ivspec);
        byte[] cipherText = c3des.doFinal(plaintext);
        sun.misc.BASE64Encoder obj64=new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder();
        return obj64.encode(cipherText);

    }

    public String decryptText(String encryptText, String key) throws Exception{


        byte[] initializationVector = key.getBytes();
        byte[] tdesKeyData = {(byte)0xA2, (byte)0x15, (byte)0x37, (byte)0x08, (byte)0xCA, (byte)0x62,
        (byte)0xC1, (byte)0xD2, (byte)0xF7, (byte)0xF1, (byte)0x93, (byte)0xDF,
        (byte)0xD2, (byte)0x15, (byte)0x4F, (byte)0x79, (byte)0x06, (byte)0x67,
        (byte)0x7A, (byte)0x82, (byte)0x94, (byte)0x16, (byte)0x32, (byte)0x95};


          byte[] encData = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(encryptText);
          Cipher decipher = Cipher.getInstance("DESede/CBC/PKCS5Padding");
          SecretKeySpec myKey = new SecretKeySpec(tdesKeyData, "DESede");
          IvParameterSpec ivspec = new IvParameterSpec(initializationVector);
          decipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, myKey, ivspec);
          byte[] plainText = decipher.doFinal(encData);
          return new String(plainText);

    }
}

I want to write a PHP function equivalent to the decryptText Java function above. am finding difficulty in generating the exact IV value generated by the Java code for encryption, which is required for the decryption.

Answer 1

This is the PHP equivalent of your Java code (I have copied the PKCS#5-padding from the comment 20-Sep-2006 07:56 of The mcrypt reference)

function encryptText($plainText, $key) {
    $keyData = "\xA2\x15\x37\x08\xCA\x62\xC1\xD2"
        . "\xF7\xF1\x93\xDF\xD2\x15\x4F\x79\x06"
        . "\x67\x7A\x82\x94\x16\x32\x95";

    $padded = pkcs5_pad($plainText,
        mcrypt_get_block_size("tripledes", "cbc"));

    $encText = mcrypt_encrypt("tripledes", $keyData, $padded, "cbc", $key);

    return base64_encode($encText);
}

function decryptText($encryptText, $key) {
    $keyData = "\xA2\x15\x37\x08\xCA\x62\xC1\xD2"
        . "\xF7\xF1\x93\xDF\xD2\x15\x4F\x79\x06"
        . "\x67\x7A\x82\x94\x16\x32\x95";

    $cipherText = base64_decode($encryptText);

    $res = mcrypt_decrypt("tripledes", $keyData, $cipherText, "cbc", $key);

    $resUnpadded = pkcs5_unpad($res);

    return $resUnpadded;
}


function pkcs5_pad ($text, $blocksize)
{
    $pad = $blocksize - (strlen($text) % $blocksize);
    return $text . str_repeat(chr($pad), $pad);
}

function pkcs5_unpad($text)
{
    $pad = ord($text{strlen($text)-1});
    if ($pad > strlen($text)) return false;
    if (strspn($text, chr($pad), strlen($text) - $pad) != $pad) return false;
    return substr($text, 0, -1 * $pad);
}

But there are some problems you should be aware of:

• In your Java code you call String.getBytes() without indicating an encoding. This makes your code non portable if your clear text contains non ASCII-characters such as umlauts, because Java uses the system-default character set. If you can change that I certainly would do so. I recommend you to use utf-8 on both sides (Java and PHP).
• You have hard coded the cipher-key and use the IV as “key”. I’m by no means a crypto-expert but to me it just feels wrong and may open a huge security leak.
• Create a random IV and just concatenate it at the start or at the end of your message. Since the size of the IV is AFAIK equal to the block-size of your cipher you just remove that much bytes from the start or end and have easily separated the IV from the message.
• As for the key, it’s best to use some kind of key derivation method to generate a key with the right size from a “human generated” password.

Of course, if you have to fulfil some given requirements you can’t change your method.