Question

im currently implementing a security module in a voting system and i was wondering what is the fastest way to encrypt (not hash) data in php? I was thinking something something like TEA, but i’ve never really tested the performance. I would really appreciate if someone share some know-how here.

Answer 1

My suggestion is PHP’s mcrypt module: http://php.net/manual/en/book.mcrypt.php

Code sample:

// encrypt
$data = 'data to encrypt';
$key = 'mykey';
$vector_size = mcrypt_get_iv_size( MCRYPT_TRIPLEDES, MCRYPT_MODE_NOFB );
$encrypted_data = mcrypt_encrypt( MCRYPT_TRIPLEDES, substr( sha1( $key ), -9 ), $data, MCRYPT_MODE_NOFB, $vector_size );

// decrypt
$key = 'mykey';
$vector_size = mcrypt_get_iv_size( MCRYPT_TRIPLEDES, MCRYPT_MODE_NOFB );
$decrypted_data = rtrim( mcrypt_decrypt( MCRYPT_TRIPLEDES, substr( sha1( $key ), -9 ), $encrypted_data, MCRYPT_MODE_NOFB, $vector_size ), "\0" );