January 22, 2002
Practical Aspects of Modern Cryptography
13
Fast Facts about Block Ciphers
nEncrypt/decrypt data a block at a time
nEncryption/decryption of sequential blocks may be related
nMode of operation
nWe always encrypt/decrypt full blocks
nNo partial blocks allowed by the cipher!
nOur plaintext may not be an even multiple of blocks, so we may need to pad the last plaintext block