eSTREAM is a project to "identify new suitable for widespread adoption", organised by the European Union ECRYPT network. It was set up as a result of the failure of all six stream ciphers submitted to the NESSIE project. The call for primitives was first issued in November 2004. The project was completed in April 2008. The project was divided into separate phases and the project goal was to find algorithms suitable for different application profiles.
Both profiles contain an "A" subcategory (1A and 2A) with ciphers that also provide authentication in addition to encryption. In Phase 3 none of the ciphers providing authentication are being considered (The NLS cipher had authentication removed from it to improve its performance).
the following ciphers make up the eSTREAM portfolio:
| HC-128 [1] | Grain [2] |
| Rabbit [3] | MICKEY [4] |
| Salsa20/12 [5] | Trivium [6] |
| SOSEMANUK [7] |
These are all free for any use. Rabbit was the only one that had a patent pending during the eStream competition, but it was released into the public domain in October 2008.
The original portfolio, published at the end of Phase 3, consisted of the above ciphers plus F-FCSR which was in Profile 2. However, cryptanalysis of F-FCSR M. Hell and T. Johansson. Breaking the F-FCSR-H stream cipher in Real Time. In J. Pieprzyk, editor, Proceedings of Asiacrypt 2008, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, to appear. led to a revision of the portfolio in September 2008 which removed that cipher.
Activities in Phase 1 included a large amount of analysis and presentations of analysis results as well as discussion. The project also developed a framework for testing the performance of the candidates. The framework was then used to benchmark the candidates on a wide variety of systems.
On 27 March 2006, the eSTREAM project officially announced the end of Phase 1.
Candidates for Profile 2 (hardware) were:
Phase 3 ended on 15 April 2008, with the announcement of the candidates that had been selected for the final eSTREAM portfolio. The selected algorithms were:
| P | In the eSTREAM profile |
| Formerly in the eSTREAM profile | |
| 3 | A "Phase 3" cipher |
| F | a "Focus Phase 2" cipher |
| 2 | A "Phase 2" cipher |
| A | An "archived" cipher |
| M | Includes a MAC |
| pat | Patented or patent pending; some uses require a license |
| Was pat, now free for any use |
| 80-bit key |
| Grain v1 |
| MICKEY 2.0 |
| Trivium |
| - |
Versions of the eSTREAM portfolio ciphers that support extended key lengths:
| 128-bit key |
| - |
| MICKEY-128 2.0 |
| - |
| - |
Note that the 128-bit version of Grain v1 is no longer supported by its designers and has been replaced by Grain-128a. Grain-128a is not considered to be part of the eSTREAM portfolio.
| Grain | [8] | PF | Martin Hell, Thomas Johansson and Willi Meier | ||
| HC-256 (HC-128, HC-256) | [9] | PF | Hongjun Wu | ||
| MICKEY (MICKEY 2.0, MICKEY-128 2.0) | [10] | PF | Steve Babbage and Matthew Dodd | ||
| Rabbit | [11] | P | 2 | Martin Boesgaard, Mette Vesterager, Thomas Christensen and Erik Zenner | |
| Salsa20 | [13] | PF | 2 | Daniel J. Bernstein | |
| SOSEMANUK | [14] | P | Come Berbain, Olivier Billet, Anne Canteaut, Nicolas Courtois, Henri Gilbert, Louis Goubin, Aline Gouget, Louis Granboulan, Cédric Lauradoux, Marine Minier, Thomas Pornin and Hervé Sibert | ||
| Trivium | [15] | PF | Christophe De Cannière and Bart Preneel | ||
| F-FCSR (F-FCSR-H v2, F-FCSR-16) | [16] | Thierry Berger, François Arnault and Cédric Lauradoux | |||
| CryptMT (version 3) | [17] | 3 | pat | Makoto Matsumoto, Hagita Mariko, Takuji Nishimura and Matsuo Saito | |
| DECIM (DECIM v2, DECIM-128) | [18] | 3 | pat | Come Berbain, Olivier Billet, Anne Canteaut, Nicolas Courtois, Blandine Debraize, Henri Gilbert, Louis Goubin, Aline Gouget, Louis Granboulan, Cédric Lauradoux, Marine Minier, Thomas Pornin and Hervé Sibert | |
| Dragon | [19] | 3F | Ed Dawson, Kevin Chen, Matt Henricksen, William Millan, Leonie Simpson, HoonJae Lee, SangJae Moon | ||
| Edon80 | [20] | 3 | Danilo Gligoroski, Smile Markovski, Ljupco Kocarev and Marjan Gusev | ||
| LEX | [21] | 3F | 2 | Alex Biryukov | |
| MOSQUITO (aka Moustique) | [22] | 3 | Joan Daemen and Paris Kitsos | ||
| NLS (NLSv2, encryption-only) | [23] | 3 | Gregory Rose, Philip Hawkes, Michael Paddon and Miriam Wiggers de Vries | ||
| CJCSG (version 3) | [24] | 3 | Tor Helleseth, Cees Jansen and Alexander Kolosha | ||
| Phelix | [25] | F | F | M | Doug Whiting, Bruce Schneier, Stefan Lucks and Frédéric Muller |
| Py | [26] | F | Eli Biham and Jennifer Seberry | ||
| ABC | [27] | 2 | Vladimir Anashin, Andrey Bogdanov, Ilya Kizhvatov and Sandeep Kumar | ||
| Achterbahn | [28] | 2 | Berndt Gammel, Rainer Göttfert and Oliver Kniffler | ||
| DICING | [29] | 2 | Li An-Ping | ||
| Hermes8 | [30] | A | 2 | Ulrich Kaiser | |
| NLS | [31] | 2 | 2 | Gregory Rose, Philip Hawkes, Michael Paddon and Miriam Wiggers de Vries | |
| Polar Bear | [32] | 2 | 2 | Johan Håstad and Mats Näslund | |
| CJCSG | [33] | A | 2 | Cees Jansen and Alexander Kolosha | |
| SFINKS | [34] | 2 | M | An Braeken, Joseph Lano, Nele Mentens, Bart Preneel and Ingrid Verbauwhede | |
| TSC-3 | [35] | 2 | Jin Hong, Dong Hoon Lee, Yongjin Yeom, Daewan Han and Seongtaek Chee | ||
| VEST | [36] | 2 | M pat | Sean O'Neil, Benjamin Gittins and Howard Landman | |
| WG | [37] | 2 | Guang Gong and Yassir Nawaz | ||
| Yamb | [38] | 2 | 2 | LAN Crypto | |
| ZK-Crypt | [39] | 2 | M pat | Carmi Gressel, Ran Granot and Gabi Vago | |
| Frogbit | [40] | A | M pat | Thierry Moreau | |
| Fubuki | [41] | A | pat | Makoto Matsumoto, Hagita Mariko, Takuji Nishimura and Matsuo Saito | |
| MAG | [42] | A | A | Rade Vuckovac | |
| Mir-1 | [43] | A | Alexander Maximov | ||
| SSS | [44] | A | A | M | Gregory Rose, Philip Hawkes, Michael Paddon and Miriam Wiggers de Vries |
| TRBDK3 YAEA | [45] | A | A | Timothy Brigham | |
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