The other ciphers are natively stream ciphers, and AES is a block cipher adapted... | Hacker News

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tptacek on Oct 22, 2012 | parent | context | favorite | on: NIST may not have you in mind

The other ciphers are natively stream ciphers, and AES is a block cipher adapted via CTR mode to be a stream cipher.

floody-berry on Oct 22, 2012 [–]

I'm still missing what makes it unfair. Are other modes of AES potentially faster? Does AES provide something that stream ciphers don't? Are Salsa20/Chacha20 unable to be compared to anything because they're native stream ciphers that look like a block cipher in CTR mode under the hood?

tptacek on Oct 24, 2012 | [–]

1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. No.

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