How to Encrypt your Password in Python using the Cryptography Package ?

In this blog we will be encrypting or converting our password into a code to prevent any unauthorized access. This is pretty valuable in today's world where one can't be totally sure of his/her data's security unless it is encrypted .

So we will using basic Python and a package called Cryptography which provides cryptographic recipes and primitives to Python developers. You may have heard of cryptography a lot as it is the underlying technology of the Blockchain and the Digital Currency revolution where the the transmission of data is made secure by encrypting and decrypting the data using Cryptography .

This will be very simple so without further ado let's get started:

Getting Ready

1. Python Installation

To check whether you have Python already installed open your terminal and type this :

python --version

If installed you will see something like this :

It should show you the version of the Python you are using without any errors and if that does not happen then you have to install it from here .

2. Pip Installation

Pip is a package installer for python that we will use to install the cryptography package .

To check whether you have pip already installed open your terminal and type this :

py -m pip --version

If installed you will see something like this :

Else to install 'pip' follow this process :

1. Go to this link : get-pip.py and download and save the code as get-pip.py .

2. Now open your terminal and navigate to the folder where this get-pip.py is saved and the type this command : python get-pip.py

Now you must see that pip is being installed !

3. Cryptography Installation

Now that you have checked that both Python and Pip have been installed let's install the main component that we are going to use - the Cryptography Package .

To do it open your terminal and type :

pip install cryptography

Now the installation should start and we are officially ready to build our first encrypter !! Great job now let's proceed !

Building the Encrypter

Now fire up your favorite IDE and let's get started writing the code. 🔥

1. Importing required library

Make a python file named anything of your choice, I have
named it encrypter.py .

Import the Cryptography Library :

from cryptography.fernet import Fernet

2. Generate the Key

So, cryptography needs authentication to word so we will 
be authenticating it by generating a key which we will use 
every time we ask it to encrypt something .
So to create the key we will write this `genewrite_key()` 
function :

def genewrite_key():
    key= Fernet.generate_key()
    with open("pass.key","wb") as key_file:
        key_file.write(key)

So, what this function basically does is it :

• Generates a unique key.
• Makes a new file named pass.key in the current folder .
• And stores the pass/authentication key in that file .

After you run the program with python encrypter.py command the new pass.key file must be generated .

3. Getting the Key

Now let's write a get_key()function to make our life easier and just call it when we need the key .

def get_key():
    key= open("pass.key","rb").read()
    return key

4. Let's Encrypt !!

Now this piece of code does the encryption for us and prints the encrypted message :

genewrite_key()
msg=input("Enter the message you want to ENCRYPT : ")
text=msg.encode()
key= get_key()
a= Fernet(key)
encrypted_msg= a.encrypt(text)
print(encrypted_msg,)

Let me explain you what's happening in the above lines :

1. First we call the genewrite_key() function that creates the pass.key file for us .
2. Next we ask the user for the message or password that he wants to encrypt .
3. Next we encode our String to a set of bytes by using python's .encode( ) function which makes it ready to be encrypted.
4. Next we call the get_key( ) function to get the generated key and store it in the key variable.
5. Then as I had mention that the key is required for the authentication, so we pass the Key through they Cryptography library's Frenet( ) function .
6. Then we will just call the .encrypt( ) function which will give us the encrypted and secure form of our string and to see that we print it later .

Let's Test it Now :

Now we can also decode it with the same key like this :

decoded_text = a.decrypt(encrypted_msg)
print(decoded_text)

You can find the all the code in my GitHub HERE . If you like it do Star it 🌟 !!

I also create Computer Science related content on Youtube at Future Driven write blogs on my Personal Site . 🧡✔

I hope you liked my first Hashnode blog ever and Do comment and let me know your thoughts .🤞😃