I notice I had exactly 2 equal signs at the end of my encrypted string too. It seems theres always 2 equal signs at the end. Here's my solution
function encryptString($string, $action, $baseIP = 'false', $extraKey = ''){
global $flag;
$encryptedIP = '';
if($baseIP){
$encryptedIP = encryptString($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], 'encrypt', false);
}
$output = false;
$encrypt_method = "AES-256-CBC";
$secret_key = $flag['2nd-encrypt-key'].$encryptedIP.'-'.$extraKey;
$secret_iv = $flag['2nd-encrypt-secret'].$encryptedIP.'-'.$extraKey;
$key = hash('sha256', $secret_key);
$iv = substr(hash('sha256', $secret_iv), 0, 16);
$output;
if($action == 'encrypt'){
$output = openssl_encrypt($string, $encrypt_method, $key, 0, $iv);
$output = base64_encode($output);
//replace equal signs with char that hopefully won't show up
$output = str_replace('=', '[equal]', $output);
}else if($action == 'decrypt'){
//put back equal signs where your custom var is
$setString = str_replace('[equal]', '=', $string);
$output = openssl_decrypt(base64_decode($setString), $encrypt_method, $key, 0, $iv);
}
return $output;
}