Make mcrypt_create_iv() an alias and move the code into /ext/standard

Hi Thomas,

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 3:05 PM, Thomas Hruska thruska@cubiclesoft.comwrote:

mcrypt_create_iv() is the cleanest access to a universal system-level
primitive that supports both /dev/urandom and php_win32_get_random_bytes()
under the hood. Unfortunately, it resides in /ext/mcrypt and the mcrypt
extension isn't always enabled/available (nor should it be). At any rate,
it is quite odd that the function php_win32_get_random_bytes() is compiled
into the core of PHP by default under Windows but there's currently no way
to get at it except through an extension. There's good code in
mcrypt_create_iv() that is significantly useful outside of the rest of that
extension and it isn't actually dependent upon libmcrypt for proper
operation.

We already have something similar to that in password.c:

http://lxr.php.net/xref/PHP_5_6/ext/standard/password.c#111

It shouldn't be hard to turn this into an API function so that other code
written against php can use it for their own purposes.

Moving the guts of this non-dependent function into the core would allow
mcrypt_create_iv() to just become an alias. The new userland function
could be located in /ext/standard/rand.c and have an uncreative name like
rand_bytes().

--
Thomas Hruska
CubicleSoft President

I've got great, time saving software that you will find useful.

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--

--

Tjerk

mcrypt_create_iv() is the cleanest access to a universal system-level
primitive that supports both /dev/urandom and php_win32_get_random_bytes()
under the hood. Unfortunately, it resides in /ext/mcrypt and the mcrypt
extension isn't always enabled/available (nor should it be). At any rate,
it is quite odd that the function php_win32_get_random_bytes() is compiled
into the core of PHP by default under Windows but there's currently no way
to get at it except through an extension. There's good code in
mcrypt_create_iv() that is significantly useful outside of the rest of that
extension and it isn't actually dependent upon libmcrypt for proper
operation.

Moving the guts of this non-dependent function into the core would allow
mcrypt_create_iv() to just become an alias. The new userland function could
be located in /ext/standard/rand.c and have an uncreative name like
rand_bytes().

We do not force to enable extension with external dependencies, even
less in ext/standard.

However, if any function should be enabled by default, if the deps are
available obviously, it should be the one from openssl, it is by far
more available and better.

Also we need something to differentiate crypto safe vs strong entropy
sources to avoid the usual issues with crypto safe used in cases with
no requirements for crypto safe entropy.

Cheers,

Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

Hi Thomas,

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Thomas Hruska thruska@cubiclesoft.comwrote:

Moving the guts of this non-dependent function into the core would allow
mcrypt_create_iv() to just become an alias. The new userland function
could be located in /ext/standard/rand.c and have an uncreative name like
rand_bytes().

There is new great PECL package.
http://pecl.php.net/package/crypto
I would like to see it as default for crypt related feature.

Anyway, we need default rundom_bytes() function in ext/standard. This is
mandatory for secure apps, but we have no default function. This should be
resolved.

Anyway, mcrypt_create_iv() is not optimum, yet. Here is possible
improvement.

https://github.com/yohgaki/php-src/compare/PHP-5.6-mcrypt_create_iv

It still requires random source and it does not support windows well,
though.
I'm about to adding new function which solves all of them like session
module.

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
yohgaki@ohgaki.net

Hi Thomas,

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Thomas Hruska thruska@cubiclesoft.comwrote:

mcrypt_create_iv() is the cleanest access to a universal system-level
primitive that supports both /dev/urandom and php_win32_get_random_bytes()
under the hood. Unfortunately, it resides in /ext/mcrypt and the mcrypt
extension isn't always enabled/available (nor should it be). At any rate,
it is quite odd that the function php_win32_get_random_bytes() is compiled
into the core of PHP by default under Windows but there's currently no way
to get at it except through an extension. There's good code in
mcrypt_create_iv() that is significantly useful outside of the rest of that
extension and it isn't actually dependent upon libmcrypt for proper
operation.

Moving the guts of this non-dependent function into the core would allow
mcrypt_create_iv() to just become an alias. The new userland function
could be located in /ext/standard/rand.c and have an uncreative name like
rand_bytes().

rand_bytes() (or random_bytes()) is common names for the task. We may adopt
it.
Anyway, I've wrote portable one for the task.

https://github.com/yohgaki/php-src/compare/PHP-5.6-rfc-random_bytes

Function name could be rand_bytes() or anything. Name is important, but
implementation is
more important here. It's still work in progress, as it does not use
OpenSSL.

I would like to use OpenSSL's RAND_bytes() for this. This mean when OpenSSL
is available,
PHP is linked with OpenSSL. With OpenSSL's RAND_bytes() and
RAND_peduso_bytes(), we
may be able to use better RNG/PRNG for the platform.

Any comments?

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
yohgaki@ohgaki.net