Analysis of authenticated encryption stream ciphers

Abstract

Authenticated Encryption (AE) is the cryptographic process of providing simultaneous confidentiality and integrity protection to messages. AE is potentially more efficient than applying a two-step process of providing confidentiality for a message by encrypting the message and in a separate pass, providing integrity protection by generating a Message Authentication Code (MAC) tag. This paper presents results on the analysis of three AE stream ciphers submitted to the recently completed eSTREAM competition. We classify the ciphers based on the methods the ciphers use to provide authenticated encryption and discuss possible methods for mounting attacks on these ciphers