Block ciphers encrypt blocks of plaintext, messages, into blocks of ciphertext under the action of a secret key, and the process of encryption is reversed by decryption which uses the same user-supplied key. Block ciphers are fundamental to modern cryptography, in fact they are the most widely used cryptographic primitive - useful in their own right, and in the construction of other cryptographic mechanisms.

In this book the authors provide a technically detailed, yet readable, account of the state of the art of block cipher analysis, design, and deployment. The authors first describe the most prominent block ciphers and give insights into their design. They then consider the role of the cryptanalyst, the adversary, and provide an overview of some of the most important cryptanalytic methods.

The book will be of value to graduate and senior undergraduate students of cryptography and to professionals engaged in cryptographic design. An important feature of the presentation is the authors' exhaustive bibliography of the field, each chapter closing with comprehensive supporting notes.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Selected Areas in Cryptography, SAC 2012, held in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, in August 2012. The 24 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 87 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: cryptanalysis, digital signatures, stream ciphers, implementations, block cipher cryptanalysis, lattices, hashfunctions, blockcipher constructions, and miscellaneous.

This book contains revised selected papers from the Second International Conference on Cryptology and Information Security in the Balkans, BalkanCryptSec 2015, held in Koper, Slovenia, in September 2015. The 12 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: symmetric key cryptography; cryptanalysis; security and protocols; and implementation and verifiable encryption.