Plaintext Recovery Attack
A plaintext-recovery attack aims to reconstruct the plaintext from ciphertexts with optional oracle access, without recovering the key — the practical realization of broken confidentiality.
Purpose
It evaluates the confidentiality guarantee of encryption modes; successful plaintext recovery proves the encryption insecure.
Mechanism
Mode weaknesses (e.g., ECB repeated blocks revealing structure) or oracles (e.g., a padding oracle) recover the plaintext byte by byte, without deriving the key.
Use cases
- ECB mode structure leakage
- Padding oracle attacks
- Confidentiality assessment