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A simple way to obfuscate ids and text. Useful when you have to make ids visibleto users. Integrates directly with Rails 3.

The goal is to make simple obfuscated ids that are not huge. This is achieved by using animplementation ofBlowfishand encrypting a single block. This produces a nice id of 11 characters (11 since thetrailing= is removed by default), for example3NINgAbOhPc. The caveat is, the idmust be within99,999,999, e.g. a max length of8.

Text can be obfuscated using Blowfish's string encryption as well, but than it producesoutput that is larger than the elegant 11 character from single block encryption.

https://github.com/mguymon/obfuscate

RDoc

gem install obfuscate

A simple example

Obfuscate.setup do |config|  config.salt = "A weak salt ..." # Length must be between 1-56   config.mode = :string           # defaults to :stringendobfuscated = Obfuscate.obfuscate( "test" )   # "HoDruKtafqyLxZxu9s-kYQ=="clarified = Obfuscate.clarify( obfuscated )  # "test"

Create an initializer inconfig/initializers with:

require 'obfuscate/obfuscatable'Obfuscate.setup do |config|  config.salt = "A weak salt ..." # Length must be between 1-56 end

Now add to models that you want to beObfuscatable, withpossible config options:

class Message < ActiveRecord::Base  obfuscatable # a hash of config options can be passed.end

To get the 11 characterobfuscated_id, which usesmode :block for the Blowfish single block encryption:

message = Message.find(1)obfuscated = message.obfuscated_id           # "NuwhZTtHnko"clarified = message.clarify_id( obfuscated ) # "1"Message.find_obfuscated( obfuscated )        # raises an ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound if the found record does not existMessage.find_by_obfuscated_id( obfuscated )  # returns nil if the found record does not exist

Orobfuscate a block of text, defaults to mode :string which uses Blowfish string encryption, allowing longerblocks of text to be obfuscated.

obfuscated = message.obfuscate( "if you use your imagination, this is a long block of text" ) # "GoxjVCCuBQgaLvttm7mXNEN9U6A_xxBjM3CYWBrsWs640PVXmkuypo7S8rBHEv_z1jP3hhFqQzlI9L1s2DTQ6FYZwfop-xlA"clarified = message.clarify( obfuscated )

Some benchmarks from my dev machine, with cpu clocking in at 2.53ghz:

Obfuscate.setup :salt => 'a very weak salt indead.'puts Benchmark.bm { |bm|  ids = []  bm.report("obfuscate x1000:") {     1000.times { ids << Obfuscate.obfuscate( rand(1...99999999), {:mode => :block} ) }  }  bm.report("clarify x1000:") {    ids.each { |id| Obfuscate.clarify( id, {:mode => :block} ) }   }}user     system      total        realobfuscate x1000: 27.110000   0.000000  27.110000 ( 27.145539)clarify x1000: 27.270000   0.000000  27.270000 ( 27.304084)

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or morecontributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with thiswork for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASFlicenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

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