In a single byte XOR, each byte from the plaintext is XORed with the encryption key. For example, if an attacker wants to encrypt plaintext cat with a key of 0x40, then each character (byte) from the text is XORed with 0x40, which results in the cipher-text #!4. The following diagram displays the encryption process of each individual characters:
Another interesting property of XOR is that when you XOR the ciphertext with the same key used to encrypt, you get back the plain text. For example, if you take the ciphertext #!4 from the previous example and XOR it with 0x40 (key), you get back cat. This means that if you know ...
