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What is Base64?

In simple terms, Base64 is an encoding scheme that can render text data unreadable. That's for the layman. Now to be precise, Base64 is a binary to text encoding scheme. It represents binary data as ASCII character string. Each Base64 digit represents 6 bits of data.

Functioning of Base64 Encoding

1. Conversion: Binary data is converted into a sequence of 8-bit bytes.

2. Grouping: The data is divided into groups of 3 bytes (24 bits) each.

3. Padding: If the number of bytes is not divisible by 3, padding characters '=' are added to the end to make the length a multiple of 3. These padding characters are only used for encoding purposes and are removed during decoding.

4. Encoding: Each group of 3 bytes is then converted into a group of 4 ASCII characters using a predefined mapping table. These characters are typically from the set [A-Za-z0-9+/], with '+' and '/' used as special characters.

5. Transmission: The resulting Base64-encoded text can be safely transmitted over text-based channels that might otherwise corrupt binary data, such as email or JSON.

6. Decoding: To retrieve the original binary data, the Base64-encoded text is decoded back into binary form using a decoder that reverses the encoding process.

Base64 as Encryption Method

Base64 encoding is not a very strong security measure because decoding it is very easy. As it is with encoding, TechWelkin Base64 Decoder can easily decode Base64 and break encryption. Therefore, this method should not be used if stakes are high. It can be used just to obfuscate ordinary text.

Base64 Table