a bytxor in pythones-like object is required, not 'str'
def xor_crypt_string(data, key = 'awesomepassword', encode = False, decode = False): from itertools import izip, cycle import base64 if decode: data = base64.decodestring(data) xored = ''.join(chr(ord(x) ^ ord(y)) for (x,y) in izip(data, cycle(key))) if encode: return base64.encodestring(xored).strip() return xored secret_data = "XOR procedure" print("The cipher text is") print xor_crypt_string(secret_data, encode = True) print("The plain text fetched") print xor_crypt_string(xor_crypt_string(secret_data, encode = True), decode = True)