ANN: obfuscate

Daniel Fetchinson fetchinson at googlemail.com
Wed Feb 10 06:06:37 EST 2010


>> All algorithms in obfuscate are obsolete, insecure and only
>> interesting for people *that* want to get well educated in the history
>> of encryption.
>
> Not true. Another use case is suggested by the chosen name for the
> library: to obfuscate text against casual human reading, while not
> making it at all difficult to decrypt by people who are motivated to do
> so.
>
> The classic example is rot-13 encryption of text in internet messages;
> it would be a failure of imagination to suggest there are not other,
> similar use cases.

I fully agree. Judging by the posts on c.l.p the need for simple
obfuscation regularly comes up. I also posted something not so long
ago and got all sorts of useful advice, a package here, a module
there, etc. It also turned out that everybody mostly writes his/her
own obfuscation routine. That is why I suggested that perhaps if the
code base stabilizes an inclusion into the stdlib could be discussed.
I'm not sure it really needs to go there but if it turns out that as
many people need this kind of stuff as I imagine it, well, then we
have enough use cases for sure.

>> Grab pycrypto, m2crypto or one of the other packages if you need a
>> minimum amount of security.
>
> Agreed. However, for cases that *don't* need security from determined
> attackers, I don't think those obviate the usefulness of this library.

Exactly.

Cheers,
Daniel




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



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