In cryptography

Cryptography

Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...

, a block cipher is a symmetric key cipher

Cipher

In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. In non-technical usage, a “cipher” is the same thing as a “code”; however, the concepts...

 operating on fixed-length groups of bit

Bit

A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...

s, called blocks, with an unvarying transformation. A block cipher encryption algorithm might take (for example) a 128-bit block of plaintext

Plaintext

In cryptography, plaintext is information a sender wishes to transmit to a receiver. Cleartext is often used as a synonym. Before the computer era, plaintext most commonly meant message text in the language of the communicating parties....

 as input, and output a corresponding 128-bit block of ciphertext. The exact transformation is controlled using a second input — the secret key

Key (cryptography)

In cryptography, a key is a piece of information that determines the functional output of a cryptographic algorithm or cipher. Without a key, the algorithm would produce no useful result. In encryption, a key specifies the particular transformation of plaintext into ciphertext, or vice versa...

. Decryption is similar: the decryption algorithm takes, in this example, a 128-bit block of ciphertext together with the secret key, and yields the original 128-bit block of plain text.

A message longer than the block size

Block size (cryptography)

In modern cryptography, symmetric key ciphers are generally divided into stream ciphers and block ciphers. Block ciphers operate on a fixed length string of bits. The length of this bit string is the block size...

 (128 bits in the above example) can still be encrypted with a block cipher by breaking the message into blocks and encrypting each block individually.