Networking / Beginners

CCMP/AES

CCMP is an awkward mouthful of an acronym that stands for Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication. CCMP provides authentication, confidentiality, and integrity checking services to any cryptographic system in which it is used. Under the hood of CCMP is the AES algorithm.

Let's try to break down CCMP into its individual parts to simplify and explain it. Recall that counter mode (CM) is one of the modes in which block ciphers can operate. You might also recall the cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode, another popular mode for block ciphers. This leaves us with the Message Authentication Code component of the name. We haven't talked about this yet so I'll briefly introduce it and its associated concepts next.

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