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One key takeaway from a security course I followed at uni was to never use a stream cipher if avoidable. They tend to be much more malleable than block ciphers,
by norswap 13y ago
One key takeaway from a security course I followed at uni was to never use a stream cipher if avoidable. They tend to be much more malleable than block ciphers, and are generally less understood.
- tptacek 13y agoYeah that security course was wrong. And, for what it's worth, the "safe" ciphersuite in TLS 1.2, AES-GCM, is also a stream cipher.
- ReidZB 13y agoNot to mention AES-CTR if you want a non-AEAD mode. I think the bias against stream ciphers has something to do with the failure of all stream ciphers submitted to NESSIE, but the eStream project has yielded useful stream ciphers.
- norswap 13y agoWell you don't really offer any argument as to why it's wrong. Granted my arguments are not really strong either. I have a hunch however that if you made stats about attacks against stream cipher vs attacks against block ciphers, you'd see proportionally more of the former.