Obfuscate strings in Python
Question: I have a password string that must be passed to a method. Everything works
fine but I don't feel comfortable storing the password in clear text. Is there
a way to obfuscate the string or to truly encrypt it? I'm aware that
obfuscation can be reverse engineered, but I think I should at least try to
cover up the password a bit. At the very least it wont be visible to a
indexing program, or a stray eye giving a quick look at my code.

I am aware of pyobfuscate but I don't want the whole program obfuscated, just
one string and possibly the whole line itself where the variable is defined.

Target platform is GNU Linux Generic (If that makes a difference)


Answer: If you just want to prevent casually glancing at a password, you may want to
consider encoding/decoding the password to/from
[base64](http://docs.python.org/library/base64.html). It's not secure in the
least, but the password won't be casually human/robot readable.

    
    
    import base64
    # Encode password
    encoded_pw = base64.b64encode(raw_pw)
    
    # Decode password
    decoded_pw = base64.b64decode(encoded_pw)
    

