An efficient, parameterized and scalable S-box for stream ciphers

Abstract

In stream ciphers, the ratio of performance to the security is the most important issue. However, the S-boxes used in a stream cipher can become a bottleneck of speed due to use of large memory, difficulty in hardware realization and more processing. This paper proposes an S-box construction that is easy to implement both in hardware and software. The proposed S-box is efficient in speed, parameterized and scalable with excellent security properties. It also provides a designer with the flexibility to trade-off among speed, area and the security properties. The security analysis has been performed on the S-box. The security properties are found to be comparable with the existing standards. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.