Differential Cryptanalysis

Differential cryptanalysis is a statistical attack technique on symmetric block ciphers that analyzes differences in inputs and outputs to recover secret keys. Introduced by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir in 1990, differential cryptanalysis was the first practical attack on DES that outperformed brute force search. The technique exploits non-random properties of cipher transformations by studying how small changes in plaintext propagate through the cipher rounds. Differential cryptanalysis has shaped cipher design for three decades.