Is there a reason why the result of Symmetric::encrypt() always starts with 'MUIFA'?

[oantonioo]

Can I trust that it will always be like this?

The idea is to send the broken 'encrypted token', removing 'MUIFA' from the beginning and when I receive the token back I add the 5 characters removed and decrypt.

This nonsense serves me for 3 things:
1 - Hide as much as possible that it is an encrypted text
2 - Hide what I use for this behind this, sodium and paragonie.
3 - If someone decides to play with the decryption, missing the first 5 characters will have a new problem.

[paragonie-security]

The ciphertext consists of a header with version information. This is then base64-encoded.

halite/src/Halite.php

Lines 48 to 50 in cfafc30

	const HALITE_VERSION_KEYS = "\x31\x40\x05\x00";
	const HALITE_VERSION_FILE = "\x31\x41\x05\x00";
	const HALITE_VERSION = "\x31\x42\x05\x00";

If you remove it, then you will have difficulty with decrypting messages across Halite versions. But if you accept that risk, that's fine.