In cryptography

Cryptography

Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...

, Mutual Irregular Clocking KEYstream generator (MICKEY) is a stream cipher

Stream cipher

In cryptography, a stream cipher is a symmetric key cipher where plaintext digits are combined with a pseudorandom cipher digit stream . In a stream cipher the plaintext digits are encrypted one at a time, and the transformation of successive digits varies during the encryption...

 algorithm developed by Steve Babbage and Matthew Dodd. The cipher is designed to be used in hardware platforms with limited resources, and was one of the three ciphers accepted into Profile 2 of the eSTREAM

ESTREAM

eSTREAM is a project to "identify new stream ciphers suitable for widespread adoption", organised by the EU ECRYPT network. It was set up as a result of the failure of all six stream ciphers submitted to the NESSIE project. The call for primitives was first issued in November 2004. The project was...

 portfolio. The algorithm is not patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

ed and is free for any use.

Structure

The cipher maps an 80-bit key

Key size

In cryptography, key size or key length is the size measured in bits of the key used in a cryptographic algorithm . An algorithm's key length is distinct from its cryptographic security, which is a logarithmic measure of the fastest known computational attack on the algorithm, also measured in bits...

 and a variable length initialization vector

Initialization vector

In cryptography, an initialization vector is a fixed-size input to a cryptographic primitive that is typically required to be random or pseudorandom...

 (0 to 80 bits) to a keystream

Keystream

In cryptography, a keystream is a stream of random or pseudorandom characters that are combined with a plaintext message to produce an encrypted message ....

with a maximum length of 2⁴⁰ bits.

External links

• eStream page on MICKEY