PHP Interview Question:

How to use cryptographic security in php?

Submitted by: Anita

If you need some pseudorandom bits for security or cryptographic purposes (e.g.g., random IV for block cipher, random salt for password hash) mt_rand() is a poor source. On most Unix/Linux and/or MS-Windows platforms you can get a better grade of pseudorandom bits from the OS or system library, like this:

<?php

// get 128 pseudorandom bits in a string of 16 bytes

$pr_bits = '';

// Unix/Linux platform?
$fp = @fopen('/dev/urandom','rb');
if ($fp !== FALSE) {
$pr_bits .= @fread($fp,16);
@fclose($fp);
}

// MS-Windows platform?
if (@class_exists('COM')) {
// http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa388176(VS.85).aspx
try {
$CAPI_Util = new COM('CAPICOM.Utilities.1');
$pr_bits .= $CAPI_Util->GetRandom(16,0);

// if we ask for binary data PHP munges it, so we
// request base64 return value. We squeeze out the
// redundancy and useless ==CRLF by hashing...
if ($pr_bits) { $pr_bits = md5($pr_bits,TRUE); }
} catch (Exception $ex) {
// echo 'Exception: ' . $ex->getMessage();
}
}

if (strlen($pr_bits) < 16) {
// do something to warn system owner that
// pseudorandom generator is missing
}
?>
NB: it is generally safe to leave both the attempt to read /dev/urandom and the attempt to access CAPICOM in your code, though each will fail silently on the other's platform. Leave them both there so your code will be more portable.
Submitted by: Muhammad