Padding (cryptography)

In cryptography, padding refers to a number of distinct practices.

Public key cryptography

In public key cryptography, padding is the process of preparing a message for encryption or signing with a primitive such as RSA. 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 the random oracle model, that breaking the padding scheme is as hard as solving the hard problem underlying the primitive.

FucK man~

Symmetric cryptography

Hash functions

All modern cryptographic hash functions 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 the Merkle-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 make its length divisable by 8/16. If it is already divisable by 8/16, then for the same reasons as before, a new 8/16 long new block is added. This means the padding is either one byte representing 0, or two bytes representing 1 etc.

The techniques of ciphertext stealing or residual block termination avoid the need for such padding. However, today, CTR mode (which converts a block cipher into a stream cipher) is largely replacing CBC mode and does not have this problem. Also, as stream ciphers are starting to be used more and more, where padding is not needed.

For a detailed explanation of why structured padding can be a hazard, see Timing attack's example.

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 ciphers 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".

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 suffices to know for the other nation that there is a lot of secret activity going on to can alert them.

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 in timing attack.