Encryption in JavaScript and decryption with PHP

The problem is that in the CryptoJS code a password is used to derive the key and the IV to be used for AES encryption, but mcrypt only uses the key to encrypt/decrypt. This information needs to be passed to php. Since you don’t want to transmit the password, you have to derive the key and IV in the same way in php.

The following code derives the key and IV from a password and salt. It is modeled after the code in my answer here (for more information).

function evpKDF($password, $salt, $keySize = 8, $ivSize = 4, $iterations = 1, $hashAlgorithm = "md5") {
    $targetKeySize = $keySize + $ivSize;
    $derivedBytes = "";
    $numberOfDerivedWords = 0;
    $block = NULL;
    $hasher = hash_init($hashAlgorithm);
    while ($numberOfDerivedWords < $targetKeySize) {
        if ($block != NULL) {
            hash_update($hasher, $block);
        }
        hash_update($hasher, $password);
        hash_update($hasher, $salt);
        $block = hash_final($hasher, TRUE);
        $hasher = hash_init($hashAlgorithm);

        // Iterations
        for ($i = 1; $i < $iterations; $i++) {
            hash_update($hasher, $block);
            $block = hash_final($hasher, TRUE);
            $hasher = hash_init($hashAlgorithm);
        }

        $derivedBytes .= substr($block, 0, min(strlen($block), ($targetKeySize - $numberOfDerivedWords) * 4));

        $numberOfDerivedWords += strlen($block)/4;
    }

    return array(
        "key" => substr($derivedBytes, 0, $keySize * 4),
        "iv"  => substr($derivedBytes, $keySize * 4, $ivSize * 4)
    );
}

The salt is generated during encryption in CryptoJS and needs to be sent to php with the ciphertext. Before invoking evpKDF the salt has to be converted to a binary string from hex.

$keyAndIV = evpKDF("Secret Passphrase", hex2bin($saltHex));
$decryptPassword = mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128, 
        $keyAndIV["key"], 
        hex2bin($cipherTextHex), 
        MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, 
        $keyAndIV["iv"]);

---

If only encryptedPassword.toString() was sent to the server, then it is necessary to split the salt and actual ciphertext before use. The format is a proprietary OpenSSL-compatible format with the first 8 bytes being “Salted__”, the next 8 bytes being the random salt and the rest is the actual ciphertext. Everything together is Base64-encoded.

function decrypt($ciphertext, $password) {
    $ciphertext = base64_decode($ciphertext);
    if (substr($ciphertext, 0, 8) != "Salted__") {
        return false;
    }
    $salt = substr($ciphertext, 8, 8);
    $keyAndIV = evpKDF($password, $salt);
    $decryptPassword = mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128, 
            $keyAndIV["key"], 
            substr($ciphertext, 16), 
            MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, 
            $keyAndIV["iv"]);

    // unpad (PKCS#7)
    return substr($decryptPassword, 0, strlen($decryptPassword) - ord($decryptPassword[strlen($decryptPassword)-1]));
}

The same can be achieved with the OpenSSL extension instead of Mcrypt:

function decrypt($ciphertext, $password) {
    $ciphertext = base64_decode($ciphertext);
    if (substr($ciphertext, 0, 8) != "Salted__") {
        return false;
    }
    $salt = substr($ciphertext, 8, 8);
    $keyAndIV = evpKDF($password, $salt);
    $decryptPassword = openssl_decrypt(
            substr($ciphertext, 16), 
            "aes-256-cbc",
            $keyAndIV["key"], 
            OPENSSL_RAW_DATA, // base64 was already decoded
            $keyAndIV["iv"]);

    return $decryptPassword;
}