A Fast Cryptographic Checksum Algorithm Based on Stream Ciphers

A design principle for the computation of a cryptographic checksum is proposed. Unlike most of the existing message authentication algorithms, the proposed scheme is based on stream cipher techniques and is non-iterative. In this scheme, a key stream sequence is used to demultiplex the message into two subsequences, which are then fed into two accumulating feedback shift registers to produce the checksum (also called message authentication code). The scheme is suitable for highspeed implementation and possesses valuable properties such as “perfect hashing”, “perfect MAC” and complete key diffusion.