Confusion vs Diffusion in cryptography

Himanshu RajHimanshu Raj
1 min read

The the theory of confusion and diffusion was given by Claude Shannon. Confusion and diffusion are both cryptographic techniques that are used to stop the deduction of the secret writing key from the attacker.

The major differences between confusion and diffusion are as follows:

Confusion Diffusion

  1. Confusion uses substitution 1. Diffusion used transposition

  2. Confusion creates faint cipher text 2. Diffusion creates cryptic plaintext

  3. Confusion obsures the relationship 3. Diffusion obscures the relationship
    between the key and the ciphertext between the plaintext and the ciphertext

  4. Confusion increases vagueness in 4. Diffusion increases redundancy in
    resultant resultant

  5. Both stream and block cipher uses 5. Solely block cipher uses diffusion
    confusion

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Written by

Himanshu Raj
Himanshu Raj