DES ECB decryption in PHP vs Python

Question

I have an existing code in PHP which decrypts a DES-ECB mode encypted string. I know DES has been deprecated and I should be changing things but it is what it is for now.

Sample code looks like this:

$enc_string = '9bb6eab4c48319d09921c7400abdc811d54981744e9a2f40'; // A encrypted string in hex format
$key = 'F6d^*g'; // A 6 bytes decryption key

$decrypted_string = openssl_decrypt( 
                       pack("H*" ,$enc_string), //Use HEX to bin packing
                       'DES-ECB', $key, 
                       OPENSSL_RAW_DATA | OPENSSL_ZERO_PADDING ,''
                    );

Please note that I am using a 6 bytes long decryption key.

I now have to shift the code to python. I came up with following:

>>> from Crypto.Cipher import DES
>>> import binascii
>>> enc_string = '9bb6eab4c48319d09921c7400abdc811d54981744e9a2f40'
>>> key = 'F6d^*g'
>>> a = DES.new(key,DES.MODE_ECB) # This gives me error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/Crypto/Cipher/DES.py", line 99, in new
    return DESCipher(key, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/Crypto/Cipher/DES.py", line 63, in __init__
    blockalgo.BlockAlgo.__init__(self, _DES, key, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/Crypto/Cipher/blockalgo.py", line 141, in __init__
    self._cipher = factory.new(key, *args, **kwargs)
ValueError: Key must be 8 bytes long, not 6

>>> decrypted = a.decrypt(binascii.unhexlify(enc_string)) # This can't work with 6 bytes long key

Questions:

1. Why does a 6 bytes long key works with PHP but not with python?
2. Is there any other module in python to make this work?

Answer 1

PHP implementation adds zero padding to the key. The below code works fine after manually adding padding to the key:

from Crypto.Cipher import DES
import binascii
enc_string = '9bb6eab4c48319d09921c7400abdc811d54981744e9a2f40'
key = 'F6d^*g'.encode('utf-8')
key = key + b'\0' * (8 - len(key) % 8) ## add padding
a = DES.new(key, DES.MODE_ECB) # This gives me error

decrypted = a.decrypt(binascii.unhexlify(enc_string))
print(decrypted.hex())