On Feb 12, 2:45 am, erikcw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm trying to devise a scheme to encrypt/obfuscate a short string that > basically contains the user's username and record number from the > database. I'm using this encrypted string to identify emails from a > user. (the string will be in the subject line of the email). > > I'm trying to figure out which approach I should use to encrypt the > data. The string will be less than 20 characters long, and I'd like > the encrypted version to be about the same size. > > I tried DES in the Crypto module, but the cipher text was to long to > be usable in this case. > > Any suggestions? > > Thanks!
There is a simple encryption, called ROT13 (Rotate 13). This is very unsecure for any cryptographical purpose, but enough to make uninformed user to think it's just a random piece of letters. The ROT13 is done by adding 13 to each character, so A => N, B => O, C => P, D => Q, etc the neat trick to this encryption is the algorithm is really simple and you don't need a separate decoding algorithm as text == ROT13(ROT13(text)). This algorithm also guarantees that any two different text would have two different ciphertext -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
