Paper 2003/081

Primitive Specification for SOBER-128

Philip Hawkes and Greg Rose

Abstract

SOBER-128 joins the SOBER family of stream ciphers, with the added functionality of incorporating a Message Authentication Code generator if required. SOBER-128 draws on the research into the previous SOBER ciphers: the design does not differ significantly from its predecessor SOBER-t32. The biggest change is the replacement of the stuttering with a strengthened non-linear function. SOBER-128 is faster and more secure than SOBER-t32.

Note: While implementing a java version, we discovered a typo in the paper confusing "+" with "xor".