As a follow up, in case no one else responds, I'll use this space to speculate.
Looks like PHP crypt is in reality a hash function built for making password hashes. Not what you need (as you probably know).
Mcrypt is a PHP extension that seems to contain perhaps the correct functions. There are a lot of options (i.e. CBC mode, CFB mode, etc.). It'll take a comparison of
Mcrypt manual page.
More notes to come, unless someone else chimes in definitively.