Authenticated encryption with PyCrypto

[Daniel]

Just got done reading this thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/b31a5b5f58084f12/0e09f5f5542812c3

and I'd appreciate feedback on this recipe:

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576980/

Of course, it does not meet all of the requirements set forth by the
OP in the referenced thread (the pycrypto dependency is a problem),
but it is an attempt to provide a simple interface for performing
strong, password-based encryption. Are there already modules out there
that provide such a simple interface? If there are, they seem to be
hiding somewhere out of Google's view.

I looked at ezPyCrypto, but it seemed to require public and private
keys, which was not convenient in my situation... maybe password-based
encryption is trivial to do with ezPyCrypto as well? In addition to
ezPyCrypto, I looked at Google's keyczar, but despite the claims of
the documentation, the API seemed overly complicated. Is it possible
to have a simple API for an industry-strength encryption module? If
not, is it possible to document that complicated API such that a non-
cryptographer could use it and feel confident that he hadn't made a
critical mistake?

Also, slightly related, is there an easy way to get the sha/md5
deprecation warnings emitted by PyCrypto in Python 2.6 to go away?

~ Daniel