Laravel 5.5+ Database Encryption Package

A package for automatically encrypting and decrypting Eloquent attributes in Laravel 5.5+, based on configuration settings.

The purpose of this project is to create a set-it-and-forget-it package that can be installed without much effort to encrypt and decrypt Eloquent model attributes stored in your database tables, transparently. It is therefore highly opinionated but built for configuration.

When enabled, it automagically begins encrypting data as it is stored in the model attributes and decrypting data as it is recalled from the model attributes.

All data that is encrypted is prefixed with a header so that encrypted data can be easily identified, encryption keys rotated, and (optionally) versioning of the encrypted data format itself.

This supports columns that store either encrypted or non-encrypted data to make migration easier. Data can be read from columns correctly regardless of whether it is encrypted or not but will be automatically encrypted when it is saved back into those columns. Standard Laravel Eloquent features like attribute casting will continue to work as normal, even if the underlying values stored in the database are encrypted by this package.

There is documentation for laravel-database-encryption online, the source of which is in the docs/ directory. The most logical place to start are the docs for the HasEncryptedAttributes trait.

Table of Contents

• Summary
• Requirements
• Schemas
• Installation
  • Step 1: Composer
  • Step 2: Enable the package (Optional)
  • Step 3: Configure the package
• Usage
• Keys and IVs
• Unit Tests
• Overrides
• FAQ
  • Can I manually encrypt or decrypt arbitrary data?
  • Can I search encrypted data?
  • Can I encrypt all my User model data?
  • Is this package compatible with elocryptfive out-of-the-box?
• Implementations
• Credits
• Contributing
• License

Requirements

• Laravel 5.5.*
• PHP >= 7.1.0
• PHP OpenSSL extension

Schemas

Encrypted values are usually longer than plain text values, sometimes much longer. You may find that the column widths in your database tables need to be altered to store the encrypted values generated by this package.

If you are encrypting long strings such as JSON blobs then the encrypted values may be longer than a VARCHAR field can support, and you will need to alter your column types to TEXT or LONGTEXT.

The FAQ contains migration instructions if you are moving from elocryptfive.

Installation

Step 1: Composer

Via Composer command line:

$ composer require austinheap/laravel-database-encryption

Or add the package to your composer.json:

{
    "require": {
        "austinheap/laravel-database-encryption": "0.1.0"
    }
}

Step 2: Enable the package (Optional)

This package implements Laravel 5.5's auto-discovery feature. After you install it the package provider and facade are added automatically.

If you would like to declare the provider and/or alias explicitly, you may do so by first adding the service provider to your config/app.php file:

'providers' => [
    //
    AustinHeap\Database\Encryption\EncryptionServiceProvider::class,
];

And then add the alias to your config/app.php file:

'aliases' => [
    //
    'DatabaseEncryption' => AustinHeap\Database\EncryptionFacade::class,
];

Step 3: Configure the package

Publish the package config file:

$ php artisan vendor:publish --provider="AustinHeap\Database\Encryption\EncryptionServiceProvider"

You may now enable automagic encryption and decryption of Eloquent models by editing the config/database-encryption.php file:

return [
    'enabled' => env('DATABASE_ENCRYPTION_ENABLED', true),
];

Or simply setting the the DATABASE_ENCRYPTION_ENABLED environment variable to true, via the Laravel .env file or hosting environment.

DATABASE_ENCRYPTION_ENABLED=true

Usage

Use the HasEncryptedAttributes trait in any Eloquent model that you wish to apply encryption to and define a protected $encrypted array containing a list of the attributes to encrypt.

For example:

    use AustinHeap\Database\Encryption;

    class User extends Eloquent {
        use HasEncryptedAttributes;
       
        /**
         * The attributes that should be encrypted on save.
         *
         * @var array
         */
        protected $encrypted = [
            'address_line_1', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'postcode'
        ];
    }

You can combine $casts and $encrypted to store encrypted arrays. An array will first be converted to JSON and then encrypted.

For example:

    use AustinHeap\Database\Encryption;

    class User extends Eloquent {
        use HasEncryptedAttributes;

        protected $casts     = ['extended_data' => 'array'];
        protected $encrypted = ['extended_data'];
    }

By including the HasEncryptedAttributes trait, the setAttribute() and getAttributeFromArray() methods provided by Eloquent are overridden to include an additional step. This additional step simply checks whether the attribute being accessed via setter/getter is included in the $encrypted array on the model, and then encrypts or decrypts it accordingly.

Keys and IVs

The key and encryption algorithm used is the default Laravel Encrypter service, and configured in your config/app.php:

    'key' => env('APP_KEY', 'SomeRandomString'),
    'cipher' => 'AES-256-CBC',

If you're using AES-256-CBC as the cipher for encrypting data, use the built in command to generate your application key if you haven't already with php artisan key:generate. If you are encrypting longer data, you may want to consider the AES-256-CBC-HMAC-SHA1 cipher.

The IV for encryption is randomly generated and cannot be set.

Unit Tests

This package has aggressive unit tests built with the wonderful orchestral/testbench package which is built on top of PHPUnit. A MySQL server required for execution of unit tests.

There are code coverage reports for laravel-database-encryption available online.

Overrides

The following Laravel 5.5 methods from Eloquent are affected by this trait.

• constructor() -- calls fill().
• fill() -- calls setAttribute() which has been extended to encrypt the data.
• hydrate() -- TBD.
• create() -- calls constructor() and hence fill().
• firstOrCreate() -- calls constructor().
• firstOrNew() -- calls constructor().
• updateOrCreate() -- calls fill().
• update() -- calls fill().
• toArray() -- calls attributesToArray().
• jsonSerialize() -- calls toArray().
• toJson() -- calls toArray().
• attributesToArray() -- calls getArrayableAttributes().
• getAttribute() -- calls getAttributeValue().
• getAttributeValue() -- calls getAttributeFromArray().
• getAttributeFromArray() -- calls getArrayableAttributes().
• getArrayableAttributes() -- extended to decrypt data.
• setAttribute() -- extended to encrypt data.
• getAttributes() -- extended to decrypt data.
• castAttribute() -- extended to cast encrypted data.
• isDirty() -- extended to recognize encrypted data.

FAQ

Can I manually encrypt or decrypt arbitrary data?

Yes! You can manually encrypt or decrypt data using the encryptedAttribute() and decryptedAttribute() functions. For example:

    $user = new User();
    $encryptedEmail = $user->encryptedAttribute(Input::get('email'));

Can I search encrypted data?

No! You will not be able to search on attributes which are encrypted by this package because...it is encrypted. Comparing encrypted values would require a fixed IV, which introduces security issues.

If you need to search on data then either:

• Leave it unencrypted, or
• Hash the data and search on the hash instead of the encrypted value using a well known hash algorithm such as SHA256.

You could store both a hashed and an encrypted value, using the hashed value for searching and retrieve the encrypted value as needed.

Can I encrypt all my User model data?

No! The same issue with searching also applies to authentication because authentication requires search.

Is this package compatible with elocryptfive out-of-the-box?

No! While it is a (more modern) replacement, it is not compatible directly out of the box. To migrate to this package from elocryptfive, you must:

1. Decrypt all the data in your database encrypted by elocryptfive.
2. Remove any calls to elocryptfive from your models/code.
3. Remove elocryptfive from your composer.json and run composer update.
4. At this point you should have no encrypted data in your database and all calls/references, but make sure elocryptfive is completely purged.
5. Follow the installation instructions above.
6. ???
7. Profit!

A pull request for automated migrations is more than welcome but is currently out of the scope of this project's goals.

Implementations

The following decently-trafficed sites use this package in production:

• securitytext.org - security.txt document registry and whois server

Credits

This is a fork of delatbabel/elocryptfive, which was a fork of dtisgodsson/elocrypt, which was based on earlier work.

• delatbabel/elocryptfive Contributors
• dtisgodsson/elocrypt Contributors

Contributing

Pull requests welcome! Please see the contributing guide for more information.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.