Welcome to
pyca/cryptography
cryptography
includes both high level recipes and low level interfaces to
common cryptographic algorithms such as symmetric ciphers, message digests, and
key derivation functions. For example, to encrypt something with
cryptography
’s high level symmetric encryption recipe:
>>> from cryptography.fernet import Fernet
>>> # Put this somewhere safe!
>>> key = Fernet.generate_key()
>>> f = Fernet(key)
>>> token = f.encrypt(b"A really secret message. Not for prying eyes.")
>>> token
b'...'
>>> f.decrypt(token)
b'A really secret message. Not for prying eyes.'
If you are interested in learning more about the field of cryptography, we
recommend Crypto 101, by Laurens Van Houtven and The Cryptopals Crypto
Challenges.
Installation
You can install cryptography with pip:
$ pip install cryptography
See Installation for more information.
Layout
cryptography is broadly divided into two levels. One with safe
cryptographic recipes that require little to no configuration choices. These
are safe and easy to use and don’t require developers to make many decisions.
The other level is low-level cryptographic primitives. These are often
dangerous and can be used incorrectly. They require making decisions and having
an in-depth knowledge of the cryptographic concepts at work. Because of the
potential danger in working at this level, this is referred to as the
“hazardous materials” or “hazmat” layer. These live in the
cryptography.hazmat package, and their documentation will always contain an
admonition at the top.
We recommend using the recipes layer whenever possible, and falling back to the
hazmat layer only when necessary.
The recipes layer
Fernet (symmetric encryption)
