Encryption between Python & PHP

[Geoff Caplan]

Hi folks,

I am looking for a practical way of sending encrypted strings back and
forth between a Python HTTP client on Windoze and an Apache/PHP server
on Linux. I am looking for a simple, lightweight symmetrical solution
using, say, blowfish: SSL would be a last resort as I suspect it will
cause fairly major installation issues on the client.

Encryption in PHP uses a wrapper around the mcrypt C library.

There is a wrapper for mcrypt in Python, but I am having trouble
getting it installed on Windows: I have contacted the author for help.

Meanwhile, I do have SSLcrypto installed: this is a very neat and fast
library. Is there any way for SSLcrypto on Python to talk to mcrypt on
PHP? My first attempts have been unsuccessful.

I have little crypto knowledge, and at first I though that something
like blowfish was a standard and different libraries should be
compatible. Now I suspect that internal implementation varies between
libraries and you have to encrypt/decrypt with the same library. Can
anyone enlighten me?

------------------ 
Geoff Caplan
Vario Software Ltd
(+44) 121-515 1154