Detect base64 encoding in PHP?

Question

Is there some way to detect if a string has been base64_encoded() in PHP?

We're converting some storage from plain text to base64 and part of it lives in a cookie that needs to be updated. I'd like to reset their cookie if the text has not yet been encoded, otherwise leave it alone.

Answer 1

Usually a text in base64 has no spaces.

I used this function which worked fine for me. It tests if the number of spaces in the string is less than 1 in 20.

e.g: at least 1 space for each 20 chars --- ( spaces / strlen ) < 0.05

function normalizaBase64($data){
    $spaces = substr_count ( $data ," ");
    if (($spaces/strlen($data))<0.05)
    {
        return base64_decode($data);
    }
    return $data;
}

Answer 2

I had the same problem, I ended up with this solution:

if ( base64_encode(base64_decode($data)) === $data){
    echo '$data is valid';
} else {
    echo '$data is NOT valid';
}

Answer 3

function is_base64_encoded($data)
{
    if (preg_match('%^[a-zA-Z0-9/+]*={0,2}$%', $data)) {
       return TRUE;
    } else {
       return FALSE;
    }
};

is_base64_encoded("iash21iawhdj98UH3"); // true
is_base64_encoded("#iu3498r"); // false
is_base64_encoded("asiudfh9w=8uihf"); // false
is_base64_encoded("a398UIhnj43f/1!+sadfh3w84hduihhjw=="); // true

http://php.net/manual/en/function.base64-decode.php#81425

Answer 4

Apologies for a late response to an already-answered question, but I don't think base64_decode($x,true) is a good enough solution for this problem. In fact, there may not be a very good solution that works against any given input. For example, I can put lots of bad values into $x and not get a false return value.

var_dump(base64_decode('wtf mate',true));
string(5) "���j�"

var_dump(base64_decode('This is definitely not base64 encoded',true));
string(24) "N���^~)��r��[jǺ��ܡם"

I think that in addition to the strict return value check, you'd also need to do post-decode validation. The most reliable way is if you could decode and then check against a known set of possible values.

A more general solution with less than 100% accuracy (closer with longer strings, inaccurate for short strings) is if you check your output to see if many are outside of a normal range of utf-8 (or whatever encoding you use) characters.

See this example:

<?php
$english = array();
foreach (str_split('az019AZ~~~!@#$%^*()_+|}?><": Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn') as $char) {
  echo ord($char) . "\n";
  $english[] = ord($char);
}
  echo "Max value english = " . max($english) . "\n";

$nonsense = array();
echo "\n\nbase64:\n";
foreach (str_split(base64_decode('Not base64 encoded',true)) as $char) {
  echo ord($char) . "\n";
  $nonsense[] = ord($char);
}

  echo "Max nonsense = " . max($nonsense) . "\n";

?>

Results:

Max value english = 195
Max nonsense = 233

So you may do something like this:

if ( $maxDecodedValue > 200 ) {} //decoded string is Garbage - original string not base64 encoded

else {} //decoded string is useful - it was base64 encoded

You should probably use the mean() of the decoded values instead of the max(), I just used max() in this example because there is sadly no built-in mean() in PHP. What measure you use (mean,max, etc) against what threshold (eg 200) depends on your estimated usage profile.

In conclusion, the only winning move is not to play. I'd try to avoid having to discern base64 in the first place.

Answer 5

I was about to build a base64 toggle in php, this is what I did:

function base64Toggle($str) {
    if (!preg_match('~[^0-9a-zA-Z+/=]~', $str)) {
        $check = str_split(base64_decode($str));
        $x = 0;
        foreach ($check as $char) if (ord($char) > 126) $x++;
        if ($x/count($check)*100 < 30) return base64_decode($str);
    }
    return base64_encode($str);
}

It works perfectly for me. Here are my complete thoughts on it: http://www.albertmartin.de/blog/code.php/19/base64-detection

And here you can try it: http://www.albertmartin.de/tools

Answer 6

base64_decode() will not return FALSE if the input is not valid base64 encoded data. Use imap_base64() instead, it returns FALSE if $text contains characters outside the Base64 alphabet imap_base64() Reference