Hiding a password in a python script (insecure obf

Question

I have got a python script which is creating an ODBC connection. The ODBC connection is generated with a connection string. In this connection string I have to include the username and password for this connection.

Is there an easy way to obscure this password in the file (just that nobody can read the password when I'm editing the file) ?

Answer 1

Base64 encoding is in the standard library and will do to stop shoulder surfers:

>>> import base64
>>> print base64.b64encode("password")
cGFzc3dvcmQ=
>>> print base64.b64decode("cGFzc3dvcmQ=")
password

Answer 2

There are several ROT13 utilities written in Python on the 'Net -- just google for them. ROT13 encode the string offline, copy it into the source, decode at point of transmission.

But this is really weak protection...

Answer 3

Do you know pit?

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pit (py2 only (version 0.3))

https://github.com/yoshiori/pit (it will work on py3 (current version 0.4))

test.py

from pit import Pit

config = Pit.get('section-name', {'require': {
    'username': 'DEFAULT STRING',
    'password': 'DEFAULT STRING',
    }})
print(config)

Run:

$ python test.py
{'password': 'my-password', 'username': 'my-name'}

~/.pit/default.yml:

section-name:
  password: my-password
  username: my-name