Python efficient obfuscation of string

Question

I need to obfuscate lines of Unicode text to slow down those who may want to extract them. Ideally this would be done with a built in Python module or a small add-on library; the string length will be the same or less than the original; and the "unobfuscation" be as fast as possible.

I have tried various character swaps and XOR routines, but they are slow. Base64 and hex encoding increase the size considerably. To date the most efficient method I've found is compressing with zlib at the lowest setting (1). Is there a better way?

Answer 1

How about the old ROT13 trick?

Python 3:

>>> import codecs
>>> x = 'some string'
>>> y = codecs.encode(x, 'rot13')
>>> y
'fbzr fgevat'
>>> codecs.decode(y, 'rot13')
u'some string'

Python 2:

>>> x = 'some string'
>>> y = x.encode('rot13')
>>> y
'fbzr fgevat'
>>> y.decode('rot13')
u'some string'

For a unicode string:

>>> x = u'國碼'
>>> print x
國碼
>>> y = x.encode('unicode-escape').encode('rot13')
>>> print y
\h570o\h78op
>>> print y.decode('rot13').decode('unicode-escape')
國碼