General Password questions

[Todd Johnson]

I am creating a dialog in wxPython for log in
purposes. Basically when the user clicks the ok
button, the dialog box saves the user name and
password as class attributes. Then as long as the
dialog exists calling MyDialog.GetUserName() and
MyDialog.GetPassword() returns them. This seems
insecure to me. Is there a better way to go about this
or is it safe as long as I destroy the dialog as soon
as I am done with it?

On a similar note, I want to save the password to a
file. How do I encrypt the password? I assume straight
binary is too easy to reverse engineer though my
program isn't really saving any vital information so
it may be acceptable. Any ideas or links would be very
appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Todd A. Johnson

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