# How does CBC work with read-write volumes?

I have read an article about an attack on LUKS in CBC mode and had a look at the WP article about CBC and now I am confused. If I have understood that correctly then changing the plaintext of a block affects all following blocks because every block needs the ciphertext of the previous block to be decrypted. Changing the plaintext ($i$) changes the ciphertext so (in my understanding) you have to rewrite the next block ($i+1$) so that the changed ciphertext of $i$ still leads to the correct plaintext of $i+1$. Rewriting $i+1$ causes the same problem for $i+2$.

This doesn't make sense so obviously I misunderstand something important.

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In short: for disk encryption, data is organized in sectors (for instance of size 512 bytes), and data may be encrypted with a chaining mode of operation such as CBC only inside these sectors, using a different initialization vector for each sector.

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Most storage encryptions using CBC mode do work that way. One drawback is that because logical and physical sectors are the same size there is no extra room for a randomized IV. So typically when overwriting a sector the same IV is used as when the sector was previously written. That is not how a real CBC mode is supposed to work. –  kasperd May 24 '14 at 18:23