How can I encrypt live video?

Question

I am looking for, preferably open source, a library or program for real-time video encryption for security purposes, not DRM. I found some decent algorithms, RVEA and VEA, but before trying to hack into the implementation, I would like to see if it already exists or there is a better way to do this, since these methods are a bit old.

Answer 1

I would suggest using AES-128 in block count mode (and not in a normal encoded block). This is easy to do with openssl, and it is available on hardware on most mobile devices and CE devices, so they become options if you had such a path in the future.

One place he uses is Apple's streaming HTTP streaming according to this specification: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-02

Answer 2

You're a little vague about requirements, but if you're just looking for a very fast way to encrypt a data stream, then RC4 is still not a bad way. It's very fast; I think it will be faster than any reliable block cipher. And you can use an arbitrarily long key.

There seems to be quite a bit of talk about the RC4 being “old” and needs to be replaced, but I don't think there are any published breaks of it. Of course, if I were the bad guy who broke it, I would probably keep this information next to my chest and use it for a little old-fashioned theft. So who really knows. The main problem, which I think is published, is that you have to quote the s-box for a number of iterations before using the key stream. In pdf describing statistical weakness is available here .

And this algorithm is available in OpenSSL , which also meets your requirements. I honestly can't say how this relates to RVEA; I don’t know anything about this. A very quick Google search mainly includes hits requiring a login to find out. Although one opaque link seemed to imply that RVEA could use any number of ciphers. It may already support RC4.