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Table Of Contents
Cryptography Engineering
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Block ciphers are one of the fundamental building blocks for cryptographic systems. There is a lot of literature on block ciphers, and they are among the best-understood parts of cryptography. They are, however, building blocks. For most applications, you probably don't want to use a block cipher directly. Instead, you'll want to use a block cipher in what is called a “mode of operation,” which we'll discuss in subsequent chapters. This chapter is designed to give you a firmer understanding of block ciphers: what they are, how cryptographers view them, and how to choose between different options.
A block cipher is an encryption function for fixed-size blocks of data. The current generation of block ciphers has a block size of 128 bits (16 bytes). These block ciphers encrypt a 128-bit plaintext and generate a 128-bit ciphertext as the result. The block cipher is reversible; there is a decryption function...
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