Simple PHP encryption and Deception

Question

I would like to be able to encrypt (and by encrypt it has no means to be secure, so maybe obscure is the better word) a number so that the number to the naked eye has no relevance. The number is essentially going to be a lobby number so will look like

http://test.com/lobby/1035

I'm using PHP so if there is a way the url could look like

http://test.com/lobby/g4fg1

but when decrypted still go to lobby 1035. I'm probably missing a trick but any help would be appreciated! Thanks

That's the thing with encrypting something. When you decrypt it, it is supposed to return the original value. Maybe you're looking for hashing the value, instead. — al'ein, Aug 17 '15 at 16:25
This might help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9262109/php-simplest-two-way-encryption Basically you could use any two way encryption. But I wonder why you'd want to encrypt this value to begin with. — Squeegy, Aug 17 '15 at 16:28
It would be just to hide it from the user, but to also make it bookmark-able, Scott has the perfect solution, thanks thought! — Ryan Kennedy, Aug 18 '15 at 11:22

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 17 '15 at 17:13

4

Instead of encrypting a URL (which is foolhardy), why not add a separate field to the database table for the lobbies that contains a unique, short, randomly generated token and reference it based on that?

answered Aug 17 '15 at 17:13

Scott Arciszewski

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Sounds like a better more realistic approach, thanks – Ryan Kennedy Aug 18 '15 at 11:22

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 17 '15 at 16:23

0

http://hashids.org/php/ has a good implementation for this.

answered Aug 17 '15 at 16:23

mcq8

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Oh god no. HashIDs is not secure by any stretch of the imagination. – Scott Arciszewski Aug 17 '15 at 17:12
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The question was not to have it secured, just to be obscured. – mcq8 Aug 17 '15 at 17:22
If you're trying to obscure something from the end-user, hashids is probably the worst way to do it. – Scott Arciszewski Aug 18 '15 at 14:33

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 17 '15 at 16:28

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You could convert every character to ASCII, shift it (number could be generated from the salt), convert it back. Then you would get kind of simply hashed input.

Function for that are ord and chr.

answered Aug 17 '15 at 16:28

m_pro_m

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This is called a Caesar cipher, for the record. It can be brute forced in milliseconds. – Scott Arciszewski Aug 18 '15 at 14:33

Simple PHP encryption and Deception

3 Answers3