Hashing & Encryption

#Configuration

When you first installed Winter, a random key should have been generated for you. You can confirm this by checking the key option of your config/app.php configuration file, or the APP_KEY of your .env file. If the key remains unchanged, you should set it to a 32 character, random string. If this value is not properly set, all encrypted values will be insecure.

To set this key you can run

php artisan key:generate

#Hashing

The Hash facade provides secure Bcrypt hashing for storing user passwords. Bcrypt is a great choice for hashing passwords because its "work factor" is adjustable, which means that the time it takes to generate a hash can be increased as hardware power increases.

You may hash a password by calling the make method on the Hash facade:

$user = new User;
$user->password = Hash::make('mypassword');
$user->save();

Alternatively, models can implement the Hashable trait to automatically hash attributes.

#Verifying a password against a hash

The check method allows you to verify that a given plain-text string corresponds to a given hash.

if (Hash::check('plain-text', $hashedPassword)) {
    // The passwords match...
}

#Checking if a password needs to be rehashed

The needsRehash function allows you to determine if the work factor used by the hasher has changed since the password was hashed:

if (Hash::needsRehash($hashed)) {
    $hashed = Hash::make('plain-text');
}

#Encryption

You may encrypt a value using the Crypt facade. All encrypted values are encrypted using OpenSSL and the AES-256-CBC cipher. Furthermore, all encrypted values are signed with a message authentication code (MAC) to detect any modifications to the encrypted string.

For example, we may use the encrypt method to encrypt a secret and store it on a database model:

$user = new User;
$user->secret = Crypt::encrypt('shhh no telling');
$user->save();

#Decrypting a value

Of course, you may decrypt values using the decrypt method on the Crypt facade. If the value can not be properly decrypted, such as when the MAC is invalid, an Illuminate\Contracts\Encryption\DecryptException exception will be thrown:

use Illuminate\Contracts\Encryption\DecryptException;

try {
    $decrypted = Crypt::decrypt($encryptedValue);
}
catch (DecryptException $ex) {
    //
}