CentralNotice Avalanche effect From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search This article is about cryptography . For other meanings, see Snowball effect and Avalanche (disambiguation) . This article includes a list of references , but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations . Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (July 2009) In cryptography , the avalanche effect refers to a desirable property of cryptographic algorithms , typically block ciphers and cryptographic hash functions . The avalanche effect is evident if, when an input is changed slightly (for example, flipping a single bit) the output changes significantly (e.g., half the output bits flip). In the case of high-quality block ciphers, such a small change in either the key or the plaintext should cause a drastic ...