This paper describes linear characteristics of the variable bit permutations (VBP) that are used in the form of the data- dependent permutations. This primitive suites well to the design of fast cheap-hardware-oriented ciphers. Because of the existence of one characteristic with bias 1/2 we discuss possibility to design a pure VBP-based block ciphers that are indistinguishable from a random transformation. We present design of the cipher which is based only on VBP, fixed permutations, and XOR operations. Performed analysis has shown that the designed pure VBP-based block cipher is secure against differential and linear attacks confirming the efficiency of the VBP as cryptographic primitive.