Missing rotor module

[rony steelandt]

I'm in the midle of porting a python 1.5 application to 2.4

I just discovered that the rotor encryption module isn't part anymore of
the 2.4 distribution.

Is there a way to add this module to 2.4, or what would be the simplest
way to replace this.
The existing application makes use of the rotor module everywhere, which
means in a lot of modules.

Thanks for any ideas

Rony

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Missing rotor module

rony steelandt <bucodi@yahoo.f rwrites:

Is there a way to add this module to 2.4, or what would be the simplest
way to replace this.
The existing application makes use of the rotor module everywhere, which
means in a lot of modules.
>
Thanks for any ideas

It's still in the 1.5 distro and later ones up to maybe 2.2. You can
probably just drop it into 2.4 and compile it. But you should migrate
away from it if you were using it for anything serious. Its security
sucks.

[Nick Vatamaniuc]

Re: Missing rotor module

Unfortunately rotor has been deprecated but it hasn't been replaced
with anything reasonable as far as encryption goes -- there are just a
bunch of hashing funtions (sha, md5) only. If you need to replace rotor
all together I would sugest the crypto library from:

http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto.html

It has good encryption algorithms like AES, IDEA and others.

I know it doesn't have rotor, because rotor is not a very good
encryption algorithm -- I still don't know why it was ever included in
Python. So refactor your code if you can to use AES for example.

But of course if you have bunch of data encrypted with rotor that your
program need to decrypt you can use this replacement found on
mail.python.org :

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-January/261304.html

It is much slower because it was written in Python while the original
rotor was in C, and I am not sure if it is _exactly_ the same.

Good luck,
Nick V.


rony steelandt wrote:

I'm in the midle of porting a python 1.5 application to 2.4
>
I just discovered that the rotor encryption module isn't part anymore of
the 2.4 distribution.
>
Is there a way to add this module to 2.4, or what would be the simplest
way to replace this.
The existing application makes use of the rotor module everywhere, which
means in a lot of modules.
>
Thanks for any ideas
>
Rony

[skip@pobox.com]

Re: Missing rotor module


NickI still don't know why it was ever included in Python.

It was another time and place altogether than the world we live in today.
Python was a much smaller language and had a much smaller following.
Concerns about security were minimal (relative to today anyway).

Skip

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Missing rotor module

"Nick Vatamaniuc" <vatamane@gmail .comwrites:

Unfortunately rotor has been deprecated but it hasn't been replaced
with anything reasonable as far as encryption goes -- there are just a
bunch of hashing funtions (sha, md5) only. If you need to replace rotor
all together I would sugest the crypto library from:
>

http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto.html

>
It has good encryption algorithms like AES, IDEA and others.

If you want something in pure Python that's easy to use, there's also:

http://nightsong.com/phr/crypto/p3.py

Its security should be better than rotor and its speed is not too
terrible. However, if you're looking to replace rotor in a production
application you should stick with something more standard,
i.e. AES-based.

[rony steelandt]

Re: Missing rotor module

Le Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:22:26 -0700, Nick Vatamaniuc a écrit :

Unfortunately rotor has been deprecated but it hasn't been replaced
with anything reasonable as far as encryption goes -- there are just a
bunch of hashing funtions (sha, md5) only. If you need to replace rotor
all together I would sugest the crypto library from:
>

http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto.html

>
It has good encryption algorithms like AES, IDEA and others.
>
I know it doesn't have rotor, because rotor is not a very good
encryption algorithm -- I still don't know why it was ever included in
Python. So refactor your code if you can to use AES for example.
>
But of course if you have bunch of data encrypted with rotor that your
program need to decrypt you can use this replacement found on
mail.python.org :

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-January/261304.html

It is much slower because it was written in Python while the original
rotor was in C, and I am not sure if it is _exactly_ the same.
>
Good luck,
Nick V.
>
>
rony steelandt wrote:

>I'm in the midle of porting a python 1.5 application to 2.4
>>
>I just discovered that the rotor encryption module isn't part anymore of
>the 2.4 distribution.
>>
>Is there a way to add this module to 2.4, or what would be the simplest
>way to replace this.
>The existing application makes use of the rotor module everywhere, which
>means in a lot of modules.
>>
>Thanks for any ideas
>>
>Rony

Thank you Nick
At least I can read the existing data.
i'll evaluate if i should continu to use this or implement another
encryption.

Rony