file handling issues

[Michael Torrie]

On 09/06/2013 09:05 PM, Leo Carnovale wrote:
> Ah and one other thing! What is this crypto algorithm you speak of? I
> desperately need some sort of encryption as at the moment anyone can
> simply open the text file and change the numbers to numbers that
> work! Where can I learn more about it?

There are two kinds of cryptography, generally.  Symmetric and
asymmetric.  Your needs will dictate which system you use.  Symmetric
cryptography means that the sake encryption key that was used to encrypt
the data is used to decrypt it.  Asymmetric cryptography basically means
one key is used to encrypt a message and another key is used to decrypt
the message.

In your case, perhaps symmetric encryption is most logical, though I'm
not at all clear what you are doing.  However you'll have to embed the
encryption key in your python source code, which isn't hidden at all.
And actually any program that embeds a symmetric key in its code can be
cracked rather easily.

Python has many libraries to support encryption.  Some are in the
standard library.  Search for python and crypto to see what docs are
available.  You might want to read up on basic cryptography principles
as well.