RSA encryption and decryption in Python

Question

I need help using RSA encryption and decryption in Python.

I am creating a private/public key pair, encrypting a message with keys and writing message to a file. Then I am reading ciphertext from file and decrypting text using key.

I am having trouble with the decryption portion. As you can see in my code below, when I put in decrypted = key.decrypt(message) that the program works, yet the decrypted message is encrypted again. It seems like it is not reading the ciphertext from the file.

Can anyone help me write this code so decryption reads ciphertext from file and then uses key to decrypt ciphertext?

import Crypto
from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
from Crypto import Random

random_generator = Random.new().read
key = RSA.generate(1024, random_generator) #generate public and private keys

publickey = key.publickey # pub key export for exchange

encrypted = publickey.encrypt('encrypt this message', 32)
#message to encrypt is in the above line 'encrypt this message'

print 'encrypted message:', encrypted #ciphertext

f = open ('encryption.txt', 'w'w)
f.write(str(encrypted)) #write ciphertext to file
f.close()

#decrypted code below

f = open ('encryption.txt', 'r')
message = f.read()

decrypted = key.decrypt(message)

print 'decrypted', decrypted

f = open ('encryption.txt', 'w')
f.write(str(message))
f.write(str(decrypted))
f.close()

Answer 1

In order to make it work you need to convert key from str to tuple before decryption(ast.literal_eval function). Here is fixed code:

import Crypto
from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
from Crypto import Random
import ast

random_generator = Random.new().read
key = RSA.generate(1024, random_generator) #generate pub and priv key

publickey = key.publickey() # pub key export for exchange

encrypted = publickey.encrypt('encrypt this message', 32)
#message to encrypt is in the above line 'encrypt this message'

print('encrypted message:', encrypted) #ciphertext
f = open ('encryption.txt', 'w')
f.write(str(encrypted)) #write ciphertext to file
f.close()

#decrypted code below

f = open('encryption.txt', 'r')
message = f.read()


decrypted = key.decrypt(ast.literal_eval(str(encrypted)))

print('decrypted', decrypted)

f = open ('encryption.txt', 'w')
f.write(str(message))
f.write(str(decrypted))
f.close()