PATTERN-FREE ENCRYPTION

A method is described for defining a reserved pattern of symbols, receiving in a crypto-module an input stream including sequential input symbols, applying a cipher to the input stream in the crypto-module so as to generate an intermediate stream including sequential output symbols corresponding respectively to the input symbols, and converting the intermediate stream to an output stream from the crypto-module by comparing successive groups of the input symbols and the corresponding output symbols to the reserved pattern and, upon finding a match to the reserved pattern in a given group, substituting the input symbols in the group into the intermediate stream in place of the corresponding output symbols. Related hardware and systems are also described.