Cipher Feedback Mode
- Tags
- cryptography
A modes of use for cipher-blocks which lets you encrypt data a bit at a time.
This is crucially useful for transmission across networks or a terminal.
Encryption and Decryption
[see page 32, Method]:
- Generate an input-block.
- Encrypt the input-block (for example using ECB).
- XOR the plaintext bit with the left-most bit of the encrypted input-block to get the first ciphertext bit.
- Left shift the input-block (prior to encrypting it), truncating the left most bit, and set the right-most bit to match the output of step 3. Use this new block for subsequent encryption.
- continue from step 2 and encrypt the rest of the plaintext input.
The decryption process is essentially the same as this process, applied in the same way, except in step 3 the XOR output will be the plaintext and the ciphertext bit we insert into the block comes from the ciphertext bit we just decrypted.