Decrypt File Made With PHP openssl_encrypt on Command Line

Question

I have a string to encyrpt:

$encryptThis = "Super Secret Text";
echo openssl_encrypt($encryptThis, 'aes-128-cbc', '1234', FALSE, 'F68A9A229A516752');

I then wget get the that php file and end up with what looks like a base64 string of characters.

When I try to decode it on the command line I get "error reading input file". The command I am using to try and decrypt is:

openssl aes-128-cbc -a -iv F68A9A229A516752 -d -in encrypted.txt -out decypted.txt

encrypted.txt is the file name that I saved the file I wget'ed to. What am I missing?

Only thing I can see is 'decypted.txt' instead of 'decrypted.txt'.. if you do a cat or less from the command line, does the file open correctly? — Oli
– Oli, Commented Dec 22, 2010 at 18:11
Yes, the file opens fine. That was a typo so I don't think that is the issue. — kaptk2
– kaptk2, Commented Dec 23, 2010 at 21:21

indiv · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-22 20:08:31Z

2

The file encrypted.txt is not in the correct format for the command line OpenSSL. It is expecting your data to begin with the string Salted__, followed by a salt. Your file does not have this format, and therefore OpenSSL prints "error reading input file" (from apps/enc.c in the OpenSSL source code).

Note that in a Base64 file, the header is not the plain text Salted__, but is rather U2FsdGVkX1.

So do cat encrypted.txt from the command line and see what it contains.

(I do not know whether PHP's openssl_encrypt is supposed to produce output in this format, but I would assume so if it's just a thin wrapper around OpenSSL's command-line utility.)

answered Dec 22, 2010 at 20:08

indiv

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kaptk2 Over a year ago

I tried using -nosalt as well on the command line still no luck.

kaptk2 · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-27 15:25:42Z

2

I finally ended up just making a shell script that is called using php exec(). I never could get PHP built in functions to decode on the command line.

answered Jan 27, 2011 at 15:25

kaptk2

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Comments

kkeller · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-24 23:25:03Z

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I guess in your encrypted and base64 encoded file, you have long lines, possibly even everything on a single line. Insert a linefeed after every 64 characters and then openssl should be able to decode it.

Openssl (at least the versions I tested) does not properly base64 decode files with lines longer than 64 characters.

answered Jun 24, 2016 at 23:25

kkeller

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