Security of credentials in iControl/REST api

The default token timeout is 20 min (1200s). You can make it shorter by patch-ing the timeout field if that's what you want. The sample below changes the timeout of the to 10s.

curl -sk https://localhost/mgmt/shared/authz/tokens/ \
 -H "X-F5-Auth-Token: " -H "Content-type: applicaiton/json" \
 -X PATCH -d '{"timeout" : 10}'

Or you can remove the token after you finish the task(s): e.g.,

curl -sk https://localhost/mgmt/shared/authz/tokens/ -H "X-F5-Auth-Token: " \
 -X DELETE

If you want to avoid a hard-coded user/pass pair in your code, why don't you make it prompt?

>>> import sys
>>> user = sys.stdin.readline()
foo   <<< entered
>>> print(user)
foo