Disadvantages of Stream Ciphers
- If an error occurs during transmission, it can affect subsequent bits, potentially corrupting the entire message because stream ciphers rely on previously stored cipher bits for decryption
- Maintaining and properly distributing keys to stream ciphers can be difficult, especially in large systems or networks.
- Some stream ciphers may be predictable or vulnerable to attack if their key stream is not properly designed, potentially compromising the security of the encrypted data.
Stream Ciphers
In stream cipher, one byte is encrypted at a time while in block cipher ~128 bits are encrypted at a time. Initially, a key(k) will be supplied as input to pseudorandom bit generator and then it produces a random 8-bit output which is treated as keystream. The resulted keystream will be of size 1 byte, i.e., 8 bits. Stream ciphers are fast because they encrypt data bit by bit or byte by byte, which makes them efficient for encrypting large amounts of data quickly.Stream ciphers work well for real-time communication, such as video streaming or online gaming, because they can encrypt and decrypt data as it’s being transmitted.