TripleDES encryption in PHP (using unique initialization vector (iv)), used when encrypting in PHP and decrypting in C#

tripledes.encrypt.php

<?php

/*
  Based on code from the following sources:
  http://www.sanity-free.org/131/triple_des_between_php_and_csharp.html
  http://www.sanity-free.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=133
  http://php.net/manual/en/function.mcrypt-encrypt.php
  
  See Also:
  http://php.net/manual/en/function.mcrypt-create-iv.php
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5108408/php-mcrypt-which-mode
  
*/

$buffer = "123456";

# get the amount of bytes to pad
$extra = 8 - (strlen($buffer) % 8);

# add the zero padding
if($extra > 0) {
        for($i = 0; $i < $extra; $i++) {
                $buffer .= "\0";
        }
}

# needless to say, you should use a unique key
# this is from the primary code source (see above)
$key = "passwordDR0wSS@P6660juht";

# create a random Initialization Vector (iv)
$iv_size = mcrypt_get_iv_size(MCRYPT_3DES, MCRYPT_MODE_NOFB);
$iv = mcrypt_create_iv($iv_size, MCRYPT_RAND);

# hex encode the return value
$crypted = bin2hex(mcrypt_cbc(MCRYPT_3DES, $key, $buffer, MCRYPT_ENCRYPT, $iv));

# this is a simple example
echo "Result: $crypted  iv: ".bin2hex($iv);

?>