peterurk/cipher

Cipher, an easy method to encrypt and decrypt

dev-master 2025-06-04 15:24 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.1

Requires (Dev)

• phpstan/phpstan: ^1.10
• phpunit/phpunit: ^10.0

MIT

• Peter Post

• encryption
• decryption
• cipher

README

A simple PHP library to encrypt and decrypt strings. The library supports AES-256-CBC and AES-256-GCM and requires PHP 8.1 or higher.

Installation

Install the package through Composer:

composer require peterurk/cipher

Usage

use peterurk\Cipher\Cipher;

$cipher = new Cipher('YourSecretKey');

$encrypted = $cipher->encrypt('message');
$decrypted = $cipher->decrypt($encrypted);

Using environment variables

You can provide the key and cipher method through environment variables:

export CIPHER_KEY=mysecret
export CIPHER_METHOD=AES-256-GCM
export CIPHER_SALT=mysalt

$cipher = new Cipher();

The defaults for the cipher method, tag length and salt are configurable via constants in Cipher.

Security considerations

AES-256-CBC is vulnerable to tampering if you do not verify integrity. Enable the --hmac option or pass true as the third constructor argument to automatically append and validate an HMAC. AES-256-GCM already provides authentication and does not need HMAC.

CLI

This repository ships with a small CLI tool. Show the help message:

bin/cipher --help

Encrypt a string:

bin/cipher --encrypt "hello" --key mysecret

Decrypt a string:

bin/cipher --decrypt "<ciphertext>" --key mysecret

File encryption

$cipher->encryptFile('input.txt', 'output.enc');
$cipher->decryptFile('output.enc', 'plain.txt');

Encrypt a file from the CLI:

bin/cipher --encrypt-file input.txt --key mysecret > output.enc

Decrypt a file from the CLI:

bin/cipher --decrypt-file output.enc --key mysecret > plain.txt

Large files are processed in chunks so they won't consume excessive memory.

Running Tests

composer install
composer test

License

Released under the MIT License.