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Lecture 5 – Block Ciphers Modes of Operations

M UHAMMAD Z ESHAN Q URASHI

D EPARTMENT OF C OMPUTER S CIENCE
F UUAST,I SLAMABAD
Lecture Agenda
To show how modern standard ciphers, such as DES or AES, can be used to encipher long
messages

To discuss five modes of operation designed to be used with modern block ciphers

To define which mode of operation creates stream ciphers out of the underlying block ciphers

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Message Padding
The plaintext message is broken into blocks, P1, P2, P3, ...
The last block may be short and may needs padding
Possible padding:
◦ Known non-data values (e.g. NULLS)
◦ Or a number indicating the size of the pad
◦ Or a number indicating the size of the plaintext
◦ The last two schemes may require an extra block.

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Modes of Operations

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 Electronic Code Book - ECB
The simplest mode of operation - ECB
For a given key, this mode behaves like we have a gigantic codebook, in which each plaintext block
has an entry, hence the name Electronic Code Book is used.

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About ECB
Strength: it’s simple.
No Error Propagation
Weakness:
◦ Repetitive information contained in the plaintext may show in the ciphertext
◦ If the same message (e.g., an CNIC) is encrypted (with the same key) and sent twice, their ciphertexts are the same.

Typical application
◦ Secure transmission of short pieces of information (e.g. a temporary encryption key)

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Error Propagation?
A single bit error in transmission can create errors in several in the corresponding block.
However, the error does not, in ECB, have any effect on the other blocks.

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ECB Weakness
Assume that Eve works in a company a few hours per month (her monthly payment is very low).
She knows that the company uses several blocks of information for each employee in which the
seventh block is the amount of money to be deposited in the employee’s account.
Eve can intercept the ciphertext sent to the bank at the end of the month, replace the block with
the information about her payment with a copy of the block with the information about the
payment of a full-time colleague.
Each month Eve can receive more money than she deserves.

This is known as Replay attack

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 ECB Weakness
ECB can leave plaintext data patterns in the ciphertext, as can be seen when ECB mode is used to
encrypt a bitmap image which uses large areas of uniform color. Although each individual pixel is
encrypted, the overall image may still be discerned as the pattern of identically colored pixels in the
original remains in the encrypted version.

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 Cipher Block Chaining - CBC
In CBC mode, each plaintext block is XOR-ed with the previous ciphertext block before being
encrypted. Invented by IBM in 1976

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Cipher Block Chaining - CBC
CBC has been the most commonly used mode of operation.
The initialization vector (IV) should be known by the sender and the receiver.
Disadvantages
◦ Encryption is sequential (i.e., it cannot be parallelized)
◦ A single bit error in ciphertext block during transmission may create error in most bits in
plaintext block
◦ The message must be padded to a multiple of the cipher block size.
Decrypting with the incorrect IV causes the first block of plaintext to be corrupt but subsequent
plaintext blocks will be correct.
Note: Decryption can be parallelized

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 Cipher Feedback (CFB) Mode
The previous block’s ciphertext is re-
encrypted and XOR-ed with plain text.

Note that encryption algorithm is used in

both CFB Encryption and Decryption

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CFB as Stream Cipher

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 Output Feedback (OFB) Mode
The output feedback (OFB) mode makes a block cipher into a synchronous stream cipher.

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 Counter (CTR) Mode
In the counter (CTR) mode, there is no feedback. The pseudorandomness in the key stream is
achieved using a counter.

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Counter (CTR) Mode as a Stream Cipher

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Summary

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