Information for the Developers of php-encryption

Status

This library is currently frozen under a long-term support release. We do not plan to add any new features. We will maintain the library by fixing any bugs that are reported, or security vulnerabilities that are found.

Development Environment

Development is done on Linux. To run the tests, you will need to have the following tools installed:

php (with OpenSSL enabled, if you're compiling from source).
gpg
composer

Running the Tests

First do composer install and then you can run the tests by running ./test.sh. This will download a PHPUnit PHAR, verify its cryptographic signatures, and then use it to run the tests in test/unit.

Getting and Using Psalm

Psalm is a static analysis suite for PHP projects. We use Psalm to ensure type safety throughout our library.

To install Psalm, you just need to run one command:

composer require --dev "vimeo/psalm:dev-master"

To verify that your code changes are still strictly type-safe, run the following command:

vendor/bin/psalm

Reporting Bugs

Please report bugs, even critical security vulnerabilities, by opening an issue on GitHub. We recommend disclosing security vulnerabilities found in this library publicly as soon as possible.

Philosophy

This library is developed around several core values:

Rule #1: Security is prioritized over everything else.

Whenever there is a conflict between security and some other property, security will be favored. For example, the library has runtime tests, which make it slower, but will hopefully stop it from encrypting stuff if the platform it's running on is broken.
Rule #2: It should be difficult to misuse the library.

We assume the developers using this library have no experience with cryptography. We only assume that they know that the "key" is something you need to encrypt and decrypt the messages, and that it must be kept secret. Whenever possible, the library should refuse to encrypt or decrypt messages when it is not being used correctly.
Rule #3: The library aims only to be compatible with itself.

Other PHP encryption libraries try to support every possible type of encryption, even the insecure ones (e.g. ECB mode). Because there are so many options, inexperienced developers must decide whether to use "CBC mode" or "ECB mode" when both are meaningless terms to them. This inevitably leads to vulnerabilities.

This library will only support one secure mode. A developer using this library will call "encrypt" and "decrypt" methods without worrying about how they are implemented.
Rule #4: The library should require no special installation.

Some PHP encryption libraries, like libsodium-php, are not straightforward to install and cannot packaged with "just download and extract" applications. This library will always be just a handful of PHP files that you can copy to your source tree and require().

Publishing Releases

To make a release, you will need to install composer and box on your system. They will need to be available in your $PATH so that running the commands composer and box in your terminal run them, respectively. You will also need the private key for signing (ID: 7B4B2D98) available.

Once you have those tools installed and the key available follow these steps:

Remember to set the version number in composer.json!

Make a fresh clone of the repository:

git clone <url>

Check out the branch you want to release:

git checkout <branchname>

Check that the version number in composer.json is correct:

cat composer.json

Run the tests:

composer install
./test.sh

Generate the .phar:

cd dist
make build-phar

Test the .phar:

cd ../
./test.sh dist/defuse-crypto.phar

Sign the .phar:

cd dist
make sign-phar

Tag the release:

git -c user.signingkey=7B4B2D98 tag -s "<TAG NAME>" -m "<TAG MESSAGE>"

<TAG NAME> should be in the format v2.0.0 and <TAG MESSAGE> should look like "Release of v2.0.0."

Push the tag to github, then use the releases page to draft a new release for that tag. Upload the .phar and the .phar.sig file to be included as part of that release.

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