Template talk:Cryptography stream

Breaking up the cipher list
The analogous template for block ciphers has a short list of common ciphers, and a long list of others.

In order of how widely used they are, the most notable stream ciphers I can think of are:


 * RC4, the most widely used
 * Block ciphers in CTR and OFB mode
 * The PKZIP algorithm, old and insecure but also widely used
 * SEAL, which is frequently discussed although I don't know of any application using it (probably because of patents)

Maybe we could separate out RC4, SEAL, PKZIP (with PKZIP linking to a section of ZIP (file format))? And link to CTR and OFB modes and Stream cipher weaknesses on another line? Curious what y'all think.

75.24.111.126 (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm all for making these templates more usable, but the only "common" cipher that I can think of is really RC4. I would argue that the PKZIP cipher is not common, because the zip file format is mostly used for compression rather than encryption anyway &mdash; and as far as I can tell, it's the only application where this cipher has been used in history. All crypto-capable zip implementations also implement AES these days.
 * By this standard, A5 and E0 would also be on the list because they're implemented in every GSM and Bluetooth device respectively. But I don't consider them "common" because they were designed for a single application only and not employed anywhere else. -- intgr [talk] 17:50, 16 January 2008 (UTC)