Stream cipher designs: a review

Abstract

Stream cipher is an important branch of symmetric cryptosystems, which takes obvious advantagesin speed and scale of hardware implementation. It is suitable for using in the cases of massive data transfer or resource constraints, and has always been a hot and central research topic in cryptography.With the rapid development of network and communication technology, cipher algorithms play more and more crucial role in information security. Simultaneously, the application environment of cipher algorithms is increasingly complex, which challenges the existing cipher algorithms and calls for novel suitable designs.To accommodate new strict requirements and provide systematic scientific basis for future designs, this paper reviews the development history of stream ciphers, classifies and summarizes the design principles of typical stream ciphers in groups, briefly discusses the advantages and weakness of various stream ciphers in terms of security and implementation. Finally, it tries to foresee the prospective design directions of stream ciphers.