Helix: Fast Encryption and Authentication in a Single Cryptographic Primitive

N. Ferguson, D. Whiting, B. Schneier, J. Kelsey, S. Lucks, and T. Kohno

Proceedings of Fast Software Encryption 2003, to appear.

ABSTRACT: Helix is a high-speed stream cipher with a built-in MAC functionality. On a Pentium II CPU it is about twice as fast as Rijndael or Twofish, and comparable in speed to RC4. The overhead per encrypted/authenticated message is low, making it suitable for small messages. It is efficient in both hardware and software, and with some pre-computation can effectively switch keys on a per-message basis without additional overhead.

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