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CBC

Cipher Block Chaining

cryptomedium

CBC is a block cipher mode that XORs each plaintext block with the previous ciphertext block before encrypting, so identical plaintext blocks produce different ciphertext. It was the standard TLS mode for years but proved fragile in practice, enabling padding-oracle attacks like POODLE and Lucky13. Modern protocols prefer AEAD modes such as GCM, and TLS 1.3 dropped CBC entirely.

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