simple-crypt 4.1.3

Simple, secure encryption and decryption for Python 2.7 and 3

What Does Simple Crypt Do?
--------------------------

Simple Crypt encrypts and decrypts data. It has two functions, ``encrypt``
and ``decrypt``::

from simplecrypt import encrypt, decrypt
ciphertext = encrypt('password', plaintext)
plaintext = decrypt('password', ciphertext)

That's it. You can see the implementation on
`github <https://github.com/andrewcooke/simple-crypt/blob/master/src/simplecrypt/__init__.py>`_.

Why Should I Use Simple Crypt?
------------------------------

* It uses standard, well-known algorithms, closely following the
recommendations `here
<http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-06-11-cryptographic-right-answers.html>`_.

* The established, efficient `pycrypto <https://www.dlitz.net/software/pycrypto>`_
library provides the algorithm implementations (the cipher used is AES256).

* It includes a check (an HMAC with SHA256) to warn when ciphertext
data are modified.

* It tries to make things as secure as possible when poor quality
passwords are used (PBKDF2 with SHA256, a 256 bit random salt
(increased from 128 bits in release 3.0.0), and 100,000 rounds
(increased from 10,000 in release 4.0.0)). But that doesn't mean
you should use a poor password!

* Using a library, rather than writing your own code, means that we
have less solutions to the same problem. That means more chance of
finding bugs, which means more reliable, more secure code.

* If simple-crypt does have a bug, the use of a header in the
ciphertext data will help support an upgrade path (I can't promise
full backwards support, because any solution will depend on the
attack, but at least the needed information is present).

What Else Should I Know?
------------------------

* You must also install ``pycrypto``. **Note** that pycrypto has
parts written in C so requires a full python install. On some unix
systems that may mean adding a package like ``python-dev`` from your
package manager.

* In Python 3 the outputs from ``encrypt`` and ``decrypt`` are
``bytes``. If you started with string input then you can convert
the output from ``decrypt`` using ``.decode('utf8')``.

::

mystring = decrypt('password', ciphertext).decode('utf8')


* More documentation and **examples** `here <https://github.com/andrewcooke/simple-crypt>`_.

* Later versions *can* decrypt data from previous versions, but data
encrypted by later (major) versions *cannot* be decrypted by earlier
code (instead, an error is raised asking the user to update to the
latest version).

* (c) 2012-2015 Andrew Cooke, [e-mail];
2013 `d10n <https://github.com/d10n>`_, [e-mail].
Released into the public domain for any use, but with absolutely no warranty.