Python RSA Key pair Encryption and Decryption

Today in this article we will learn Python RSA Key pair Encryption and Decryption with examples.

We will use a Python package called PyMySQL and configure the connection parameters to include the public key for encryption and the private key for decryption.

PyMySQL supports connecting to a MySQL server using RSA keys for secure communication.

Here’s how you can use RSA keys with PyMySQL.

Generate RSA key Pair – public and private keys

First, we will generate an RSA key pair (public and private keys).

Lets the OpenSSL library generate the keys.

Open a terminal or command prompt and run the following commands.

Generate Private Keys

Let’s create a private key with a 2048-bit key length.

openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out privatekey.pem -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048

Generate Public Keys

openssl rsa -pubout -in privatekey.pem -out publickey.pem

Install PyMySQL with RSA

Please install the cryptography package,

pip install cryptography

Use RSA keys in your Python code

Kindly add below import statements

import pymysql.cursors 
from cryptography.hazmat.backends import default_backend 
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives import serialization

Read RSA keys in Python code

Let’s read files from the files using the below code,

Read private keys

with open("privatekey.pem", "rb") as f:
    private_key = serialization.load_pem_private_key(
        f.read(), password=None, backend=default_backend()
    )

Read public keys

with open("publickey.pem", "rb") as f:
    public_key = serialization.load_pem_public_key(
        f.read(), backend=default_backend()
    )

Connect using RSA keys with PyMySQL

Connect to the database

connection = pymysql.connect(host='localhost',
                             user='user',
                             password='passwd',
                             database='db',
                             cursorclass=pymysql.cursors.DictCursor,
                             "ssl": {
        "ca": "/path/../server-ca.pem",  # Path Server CA certificate (optional)
        "cert": "/path/../client-cert.pem", # Path client certificate(optional)
        "key": "/path/../client-key.pem",  # Path private key (optional)
        "cipher": "TLSv1.2",
        "keyfile": public_key,  # Use public key for encryption
        "certfile": private_key,  # Use private key for decryption
    })

In the above,

The ssl property includes the paths to the server CA certificate, client certificate, and client private key.

It uses the RSA keys for encryption and decryption by setting the keyfile and certfile to the respective loaded keys.

Read from the database

Let’s perform read operations on the MySQL Database,

  with connection.cursor() as cursor:
        # Read a single record
        sql = "SELECT `College`, `Name` FROM `Employee` WHERE `ID`=%s"
        cursor.execute(sql)
        result = cursor.fetchone()
        print(result)

Do you have any comments or ideas or any better suggestions to share?

Please sound off your comments below.

Happy Coding !!

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