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phpsecurityopenssltoken

Generating cryptographically secure tokens

In order to generate a 32 character token for access to our API we currently use:

$token = md5(uniqid(mt_rand(), true));

I have read that this method is not cryptographically secure as it's based on the system clock, and that openssl_random_pseudo_bytes would be a better solution as it would be harder to predict.

If this is the case, what would the equivalent code look like?

I presume something like this, but I don't know if this is right...

$token = md5(openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(32));

Also what length makes sense that I should pass to the function?

Solution

  • Here is the correct solution:

    $token = bin2hex(openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(16));

# or in php7
$token = bin2hex(random_bytes(16));