PHP sending encrypted data via the URL

Question

I'm trying to send encrypted data over the url to another site (using file_get_contents("anotherUrl.php?hash=$encryptedString"). The problem is, sometimes, the encryption contains some special characters, like +, and this causes the decryption to fail.

Here are my encryption / decryption methods:

public function encrypt($string, $key)
{
    return base64_encode(mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, md5($key), $string, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, md5(md5($key))));
}

public function decrypt($encrypted, $key)
{
    return rtrim(mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, md5($key), base64_decode($encrypted), MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, md5(md5($key))), "\0");
}

Here's an example encrypted string which contains a +, and I'm guessing that this causes the decryption to fail.

oWCrVPaS+5GbxcQFc0fulUk/zRAkDD60av4zlPiWskE=

Any ideas how I should solve this? I've tried to do urlencode() and urldecode() on the hash, however that also seems to cause the encryption to break. Is there a way to change the encryption algorithm to get it to only return url safe characters?

Answer 1

Take a look at this thread:

Passing base64 encoded strings in URL

Essentially you DO want to urlencode() before sending the string, however you do NOT want to urldecode() at the other end.