lightweight encryption of text file

Daniel Fetchinson fetchinson at googlemail.com
Fri Jan 8 14:14:51 EST 2010


I have a plain text file which I would like to protect in a very
simple minded, yet for my purposes sufficient, way. I'd like to
encrypt/convert it into a binary file in such a way that possession of
a password allows anyone to convert it back into the original text
file while not possessing the password one would only see the
following with the standard linux utility 'file':

[fetchinson at fetch ~]$ file encrypted.data
encrypted.data: data

and the effort required to convert the file back to the original text
file without the password would be equivalent to guessing the
password.

I'm fully aware of the security implications of this loose
specification, but for my purposes this would be a good solution.

What would be the simplest way to achieve this using preferably stock
python without 3rd party modules? If a not too complex 3rd party
module made it really simple that would be acceptable too.

Cheers,
Daniel


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown



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