ChaCha, a variant of Salsa20

Abstract

ChaCha8 is a 256-bit stream cipher based on the 8-round cipher Salsa20/8. The changes from Salsa20/8 to ChaCha8 are designed to improve diffusion per round, conjecturally increasing resistance to cryptanalysis, while preserving—and often improving—time per round. ChaCha12 and ChaCha20 are analogous modifications of the 12-round and 20-round ciphers Salsa20/12 and Salsa20/20. This paper presents the ChaCha family and explains the differences between Salsa20 and ChaCha.