Clash Royale CLAN TAG#URR8PPP

CodeIgniter Encryption Library

I'm building a quick site with CodeIgniter and currently I'm making use of the CI 'encrypt' library. Reading through here it sounds like I just throw on a quick:

$this->encrypt->encode($secret_data);


and do this when you want to use it:

$this->encrypt->decode($encripted_string);


Then the magic of CI and Mcrypt do the rest.

Well I'm not sure I can sleep without knowing what is going on in the background. So I have two questions...

How is this working? Or is there a good resource to explain to me how this is working that I can read up on it?

Is this generally thought of as a safe way to encrypt data? If not where else should I be looking.

2 Answers
2

1. How is it working:

codeigniter 2.x

The CodeIgniter Encryption Class provides a two-way keyed encoding using XOR Hashing and Mcrypt.

interesting about XOR Hashing: https://stackoverflow.com/a/27952689/2275490

the php manual about Mcrypt: http://php.net/manual/en/book.mcrypt.php

Also you might want to check in system->libraries for the encrypt.php file and discover what it does.

codeigniter 3.x

Provides two-way keyed encoding using Mcrypt

the php manual about Mcrypt: http://php.net/manual/en/book.mcrypt.php
the CI manual: http://www.codeigniter.com/userguide3/libraries/encryption.html

2. thought as safe way to encrypt data:

that's opinion based, I think definitely yes for a "quick site"

You're reading the "wrong" thing ...

The CodeIgniter documentation on EllisLab's website is outdated and no longer the official one. It's also for CodeIgniter 2.x, which is itself no longer supported.

The official documentation is on codeigniter.com, and you should be using CodeIgniter 3.x, which deprecates that old CI_Encrypt library and replaces it with a new one, which is far better and more well-documented, here:

CI_Encrypt

http://www.codeigniter.com/userguide3/libraries/encryption.html

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