- Padding (cryptography)
In
cryptography , padding refers to a number of distinct practices.Classical cryptography
Official messages often start and end in predictable ways: "My dear ambassador, Weather report, Sincerely yours", etc. The primary use of padding with
classical cipher s is to prevent the cryptanalyst from using that predictability to find cribs that aid in breaking the encryption. Random length padding also prevents an attacker from knowing the exact length of the plaintext message.Many classical ciphers arrange the plaintext into particular patterns (e.g., squares, rectangles, etc) and if the plaintext doesn't exactly fit, it is often necessary to supply additional letters to fill out the pattern. Using nonsense letters for this purpose has a side benefit of making some kinds of cryptanalysis more difficult.
A famous example of classical padding which caused a great misunderstanding is "
the world wonders ".ymmetric cryptography
Hash functions
All modern
cryptographic hash function s process messages in fixed-length blocks. Padding is appended to the final block in a predictable way that includes the total length of the message; this padding ensures that the final block is the right length, and is a key part of the security proof for this way of building hash functions, which is known as theMerkle-Damgård construction .CBC mode
Cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode is a popular
block cipher mode of operation . It requires messages whose length is a multiple of the block size (typically 8 or 16 bytes), so messages have to be padded to bring them to this length. One method is to fill out the last block with a 1-bit followed by zero bits. If the input happens to fill up an entire block, another block is added to accommodate the padding; otherwise, the end of the input plaintext might be misinterpreted as padding. Another method is to append n bytes with value (n−1) to the end of the plaintext to fill out a complete block. If the message already exactly fills a block, then for the same reasons as before, a full block of padding block is added. This means the padding is either one byte of 0, or two bytes of 1 etc.More intricate ways of ending a message such as
ciphertext stealing orresidual block termination avoid the need for such padding. However, today, CTR mode is largely replacing CBC mode, and CTR mode doesn't need padding at all.There are
timing attack s based on structured CBC padding.Padding methods
Two simple ways of padding a message are:
Bit padding
This is described in [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1321.html RFC1321] .
A single set ('1') bit is added to the message and then as many reset ('0') bits as required are added. The number of reset ('0') bits added will depend on the block boundary to which the message needs to be extended. In bit terms this is "1000 ... 0000", in hex byte terms this is "80 00 ... 00 00"
This method can be used to pad messages which are any number of bits long, not necessarily a whole number of bytes long.
Byte padding
ANSI X.923
In ANSI X.923 bytes filled with zeros (0)'s are padded and the last byte defines the padding boundaries or the number of padded bytes.
Example: In the following example the block size is 8 bytes, and padding is required for 4 bytes (in Hexadecimal format)
... | DD DD DD DD DD DD DD DD | DD DD DD DD 00 00 00 04
ISO 10126
ISO 10126 specifies that the padding should be done at the end of that last block with random bytes,and the padding boundary should be specified by the last byte
Example: In the following example the block size is 8 bytes and padding is required for 4 bytes
... | DD DD DD DD DD DD DD DD | DD DD DD DD 81 A6 23 04
PKCS7
This is described in [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3852#section-6.3 RFC 3852] .
Padding is in whole bytes. The value of each added byte is the number of bytes that are added, i.e. N bytes, each of value N are added. The number of bytes added will depend on the block boundary to which the message needs to be extended.
The padding will be one of:
01 02 02 03 03 03 04 04 04 04 05 05 05 05 05 etc.
Example: In the following example the block size is 8 bytes and padding is required for 4 bytes
... | DD DD DD DD DD DD DD DD | DD DD DD DD 04 04 04 04
Zero Padding
All the bytes that are required to be padded are padded with zero.
Example: In the following example the block size is 8 bytes and padding is required for 4 bytes
... | DD DD DD DD DD DD DD DD | DD DD DD DD 00 00 00 00
Zero padding may not be reversible if the original file ends with one or more zero bytes.
Public key cryptography
In
public key cryptography , padding is the process of preparing a message for encryption or signing with a primitive such asRSA . A popular example is OAEP. This is called "padding" because originally, random material was simply appended to the message to make it long enough for the primitive, but this is not a secure form of padding and is no longer used. A modern padding scheme aims to ensure that the attacker cannot manipulate the plaintext to exploit the mathematical structure of the primitive and will usually be accompanied by a proof, often in therandom oracle model , that breaking the padding scheme is as hard as solving the hard problem underlying the primitive.Traffic analysis
Even if perfect cryptographic routines are used, the attacker can gain knowledge of the amount of traffic that was generated. The attacker might not know what A and B were talking about, but can know that they "were" talking and "how much" they talked. In certain circumstances this can be very bad. Consider for example when a military is organising a secret attack against another nation: it may suffice to alert the other nation for them to know merely that there "is" a lot of secret activity going on.
Padding messages is a way to make it harder to do
traffic analysis . Normally, a number of random bits are appended to the end of the message with an indication at the end how much this random data is. The randomness should have a minimum value of 0, a maximum number of N and an even distribution between the two extremes. Note, that increasing 0 does not help, only increasing N helps, though that also means that a lower percentage of the channel will be used to transmit real data. Also note, that since the cryptographic routine is assumed to be uncrackable (otherwise the padding length itself is crackable), it does not help to put the padding anywhere else, e.g. at the beginning, in the middle, or in a sporadic manner. For the same reason, padding can be structured (e.g. it can simply be a set of zeros) - though structured padding can be hazard, as explained intiming attack .ee also
*
Russian copulation , another technique to prevent cribs
*Initialisation vector ,salt (cryptography) , which are sometimes confused with padding
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