Salsa20

Internally, the cipher uses bitwise addition ⊕ (exclusive OR), 32-bit addition mod 2³² ⊞, and constant-distance rotation operations <<< on an internal state of sixteen 32-bit words. Using only add-rotate-xor operations avoids the possibility of timing attacks in software implementations. The internal state is made of sixteen 32-bit words arranged as a 4×4 matrix.

The initial state is made up of eight words of key ( ), two words of stream position ( ), two words of nonce (essentially additional stream position bits) ( ), and four fixed words ( ):

The constant words spell "expand 32-byte k" in ASCII (i.e. the 4 words are "expa", "nd 3", "2-by", and "te k"). This is an example of a nothing-up-my-sleeve number. The core operation in Salsa20 is the quarter-round QR(a, b, c, d) that takes a four-word input and produces a four-word output:

b ^= (a + d) <<< 7;
c ^= (b + a) <<< 9;
d ^= (c + b) <<< 13;
a ^= (d + c) <<< 18;

Odd-numbered rounds apply QR(a, b, c, d) to each of the four columns in the 4×4 matrix, and even-numbered rounds apply it to each of the four rows. Two consecutive rounds (column-round and row-round) together are called a double-round:

// Odd round
QR( 0,  4,  8, 12)	// column 1
QR( 5,  9, 13,  1)	// column 2
QR(10, 14,  2,  6)	// column 3
QR(15,  3,  7, 11)	// column 4
// Even round
QR( 0,  1,  2,  3)	// row 1
QR( 5,  6,  7,  4)	// row 2
QR(10, 11,  8,  9)	// row 3
QR(15, 12, 13, 14)	// row 4

An implementation in C/C++ appears below.

#include <stdint.h>
#define ROTL(a,b) (((a) << (b)) | ((a) >> (32 - (b))))
#define QR(a, b, c, d)(		\
	b ^= ROTL(a + d, 7),	\
	c ^= ROTL(b + a, 9),	\
	d ^= ROTL(c + b,13),	\
	a ^= ROTL(d + c,18))
#define ROUNDS 20
 
void salsa20_block(uint32_t out[16], uint32_t const in[16])
{
	int i;
	uint32_t x[16];

	for (i = 0; i < 16; ++i)
		x[i] = in[i];
	// 10 loops × 2 rounds/loop = 20 rounds
	for (i = 0; i < ROUNDS; i += 2) {
		// Odd round
		QR(x[ 0], x[ 4], x[ 8], x[12]);	// column 1
		QR(x[ 5], x[ 9], x[13], x[ 1]);	// column 2
		QR(x[10], x[14], x[ 2], x[ 6]);	// column 3
		QR(x[15], x[ 3], x[ 7], x[11]);	// column 4
		// Even round
		QR(x[ 0], x[ 1], x[ 2], x[ 3]);	// row 1
		QR(x[ 5], x[ 6], x[ 7], x[ 4]);	// row 2
		QR(x[10], x[11], x[ 8], x[ 9]);	// row 3
		QR(x[15], x[12], x[13], x[14]);	// row 4
	}
	for (i = 0; i < 16; ++i)
		out[i] = x[i] + in[i];
}

In the last line, the mixed array is added, word by word, to the original array to obtain its 64-byte key stream block. This is important because the mixing rounds on their own are invertible. In other words, applying the reverse operations would produce the original 4×4 matrix, including the key. Adding the mixed array to the original makes it impossible to recover the input. (This same technique is widely used in hash functions from MD4 through SHA-2.)

Salsa20 performs 20 rounds of mixing on its input.[1] However, reduced-round variants Salsa20/8 and Salsa20/12 using 8 and 12 rounds respectively have also been introduced. These variants were introduced to complement the original Salsa20, not to replace it, and perform better[note 1] in the eSTREAM benchmarks than Salsa20, though with a correspondingly lower security margin.

Salsa20 has been selected as a Phase 3 design for Profile 1 (software) by the eSTREAM project, receiving the highest weighted voting score of any Profile 1 algorithm at the end of Phase 2.[10] Salsa20 had previously been selected as a Phase 2 Focus design for Profile 1 (software) and as a Phase 2 design for Profile 2 (hardware) by the eSTREAM project,[11] but was not advanced to Phase 3 for Profile 2 because eSTREAM felt that it was probably not a good candidate for extremely resource-constrained hardware environments.[12]

As of 2015, there are no published attacks on Salsa20/12 or the full Salsa20/20; the best attack known[3] breaks 8 of the 12 or 20 rounds.

In 2005, Paul Crowley reported an attack on Salsa20/5 with an estimated time complexity of 2¹⁶⁵ and won Bernstein's US$1000 prize for "most interesting Salsa20 cryptanalysis".[13] This attack and all subsequent attacks are based on truncated differential cryptanalysis. In 2006, Fischer, Meier, Berbain, Biasse, and Robshaw reported an attack on Salsa20/6 with estimated time complexity of 2¹⁷⁷, and a related-key attack on Salsa20/7 with estimated time complexity of 2²¹⁷.[14]

In 2007, Tsunoo et al. announced a cryptanalysis of Salsa20 which breaks 8 out of 20 rounds to recover the 256-bit secret key in 2²⁵⁵ operations, using 2^11.37 keystream pairs.[15] However, this attack does not seem to be competitive with the brute force attack.

In 2008, Aumasson, Fischer, Khazaei, Meier, and Rechberger reported a cryptanalytic attack against Salsa20/7 with a time complexity of 2¹⁵¹, and they reported an attack against Salsa20/8 with an estimated time complexity of 2²⁵¹. This attack makes use of the new concept of probabilistic neutral key bits for probabilistic detection of a truncated differential. The attack can be adapted to break Salsa20/7 with a 128-bit key.[3]

In 2012, the attack by Aumasson et al. was improved by Shi et al. against Salsa20/7 (128-bit key) to a time complexity of 2¹⁰⁹ and Salsa20/8 (256-bit key) to 2²⁵⁰.[16]

In 2013, Mouha and Preneel published a proof[17] that 15 rounds of Salsa20 was 128-bit secure against differential cryptanalysis. (Specifically, it has no differential characteristic with higher probability than 2⁻¹³⁰, so differential cryptanalysis would be more difficult than 128-bit key exhaustion.)

ChaCha

The ChaCha quarter-round function. Four parallel copies make a round.
General
Designers	Daniel J. Bernstein
First published	2008
Derived from	Salsa20
Related to	Rumba20
Cipher detail
Key sizes	128 or 256 bits
State size	512 bits
Structure	ARX
Rounds	20
Speed	3.95 cpb on an Intel Core 2 Duo[4]: 2

In 2008, Bernstein published the closely related ChaCha family of ciphers, which aim to increase the diffusion per round while achieving the same or slightly better performance.[18] The Aumasson et al. paper also attacks ChaCha, achieving one round fewer (for 256-bit ChaCha6 with complexity 2¹³⁹, ChaCha7 with complexity 2²⁴⁸, and 128-bit ChaCha6 within 2¹⁰⁷) but claims that the attack fails to break 128-bit ChaCha7.[3]

Like Salsa20, ChaCha's initial state includes a 128-bit constant, a 256-bit key, a 64-bit counter, and a 64-bit nonce (in the original version; as described later, a version of ChaCha from RFC 7539 is slightly different), arranged as a 4×4 matrix of 32-bit words.[18] But ChaCha re-arranges some of the words in the initial state:

The constant is the same as Salsa20 ("expand 32-byte k"). ChaCha replaces the Salsa20 quarter-round QR(a, b, c, d) with

 a += b; d ^= a; d <<<= 16;
 c += d; b ^= c; b <<<= 12;
 a += b; d ^= a; d <<<= 8;
 c += d; b ^= c; b <<<= 7;

Notice that this version updates each word twice, while Salsa20's quarter round updates each word only once. In addition, the ChaCha quarter-round diffuses changes more quickly. On average, after changing 1 input bit the Salsa20 quarter-round will change 8 output bits while ChaCha will change 12.5 output bits.[4]

The ChaCha quarter round has the same number of adds, xors, and bit rotates as the Salsa20 quarter-round, but the fact that two of the rotates are multiples of 8 allows for a small optimization on some architectures including x86.[19] Additionally, the input formatting has been rearranged to support an efficient SSE implementation optimization discovered for Salsa20. Rather than alternating rounds down columns and across rows, they are performed down columns and along diagonals.[4]^: 4 Like Salsa20, ChaCha arranges the sixteen 32-bit words in a 4×4 matrix. If we index the matrix elements from 0 to 15

then a double round in ChaCha is:

 // Odd round
 QR(0, 4,  8, 12)	// 1st column
 QR(1, 5,  9, 13)	// 2nd column
 QR(2, 6, 10, 14)	// 3rd column
 QR(3, 7, 11, 15)	// 4th column
 // Even round
 QR(0, 5, 10, 15)	// diagonal 1 (main diagonal)
 QR(1, 6, 11, 12)	// diagonal 2
 QR(2, 7,  8, 13)	// diagonal 3
 QR(3, 4,  9, 14)	// diagonal 4

ChaCha20 uses 10 iterations of the double round.[20] An implementation in C/C++ appears below.

#define ROTL(a,b) (((a) << (b)) | ((a) >> (32 - (b))))
#define QR(a, b, c, d) (			\
	a += b,  d ^= a,  d = ROTL(d,16),	\
	c += d,  b ^= c,  b = ROTL(b,12),	\
	a += b,  d ^= a,  d = ROTL(d, 8),	\
	c += d,  b ^= c,  b = ROTL(b, 7))
#define ROUNDS 20
 
void chacha_block(uint32_t out[16], uint32_t const in[16])
{
	int i;
	uint32_t x[16];

	for (i = 0; i < 16; ++i)	
		x[i] = in[i];
	// 10 loops × 2 rounds/loop = 20 rounds
	for (i = 0; i < ROUNDS; i += 2) {
		// Odd round
		QR(x[0], x[4], x[ 8], x[12]); // column 0
		QR(x[1], x[5], x[ 9], x[13]); // column 1
		QR(x[2], x[6], x[10], x[14]); // column 2
		QR(x[3], x[7], x[11], x[15]); // column 3
		// Even round
		QR(x[0], x[5], x[10], x[15]); // diagonal 1 (main diagonal)
		QR(x[1], x[6], x[11], x[12]); // diagonal 2
		QR(x[2], x[7], x[ 8], x[13]); // diagonal 3
		QR(x[3], x[4], x[ 9], x[14]); // diagonal 4
	}
	for (i = 0; i < 16; ++i)
		out[i] = x[i] + in[i];
}

ChaCha is the basis of the BLAKE hash function, a finalist in the NIST hash function competition, and its faster successors BLAKE2 and BLAKE3. It also defines a variant using sixteen 64-bit words (1024 bits of state), with correspondingly adjusted rotation constants.

• Speck – an add-rotate-xor cipher developed by the NSA
• ChaCha20-Poly1305 – an AEAD scheme combining ChaCha20 with the Poly1305 MAC

• Snuffle 2005: the Salsa20 encryption function
• Salsa20 specification (PDF)
• Salsa20/8 and Salsa20/12 (PDF)
• The eSTREAM Project: Salsa20
• The ChaCha family of stream ciphers
• Salsa20 Usage & Deployment
• Implementation and Didactical Visualization of the ChaCha Cipher Family in CrypTool 2