Source: wikibot/padding-cryptography
= Padding (cryptography)
{wiki=Padding_(cryptography)}
In cryptography, padding is a technique used to ensure that plaintext data conforms to the required length for encryption algorithms, especially block ciphers. Block ciphers operate on fixed-size blocks of data (for instance, 128 bits or 256 bits), and if the plaintext does not fill up a complete block, padding is added to complete it.