What question did this study set out to answer?

The research aims to introduce a new AEAD stream cipher, SNOW-Axn, suitable for 6G encryption requirements.

May 7, 2026IACR Communications in Cryptology0 citationsOpen Access

Pushing to the limits: SNOW-Axn – a fast AEAD stream cipher in aggregated mode

DWDachao WangLund University AMAlexander MaximovEricsson (Sweden)PEPatrik EkdahlEricsson (Sweden)

Key Points

The research aims to introduce a new AEAD stream cipher, SNOW-Axn, suitable for 6G encryption requirements.
Developed SNOW-Axn with variable key and nonce lengths
Implemented new LFSR and FSM components
Incorporated aggregated processing and a new integrity mechanism
SNOW-Ax4 achieves 421 Gbps encryption speed
Significant performance improvement over existing ciphers

Abstract

For future 6G, there is an anticipation that a speed of around 100 Gbps could become a requirement, a speed that most current ciphers cannot reach. Due to this, we propose a new SNOW family AEAD stream cipher called SNOW-Axn that has the capability to adopt a variable length of the key (up to 256 bits), IV/nonce (up to 224 bits) and MAC (up to 128 bits) for the three modes of operation (encryption only, integrity only, AEAD), application and/or standardisation domain separations, and other parameters. SNOW-Axn has new updated LFSR and FSM components, the feature of aggregated processing, as well as a new integrity mechanism. These changes bring a significant performance boost. We provide exampled instances called SNOW-Ax1 and SNOW-Ax4, where the latter reaches the encryption speed of 421 Gbps in pure software on a laptop-grade CPU.

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