What Is ChaCha20-Poly1305?
ChaCha20-Poly1305 is an Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) construction that combines the ChaCha20 stream cipher with the Poly1305 MAC for integrity verification. Created by renowned cryptographer Daniel J. Bernstein, it provides 256-bit security while being designed for high performance in software.
Unlike AES, ChaCha20 is a stream cipher that uses simple addition, XOR, and rotation operations (ARX). These execute in constant time on all processors, making ChaCha20 naturally immune to timing side-channel attacks.
Who Uses ChaCha20-Poly1305?
Google adopted it for TLS on Android and Chrome. Cloudflare uses it for web traffic encryption. It is the default cipher in TLS 1.3, SSH, and WireGuard.
ChaCha20 in VPNWG
VPNWG inherits WireGuard's use of ChaCha20-Poly1305 as its exclusive encryption algorithm. This is not configurable — every connection uses ChaCha20-Poly1305, eliminating cipher downgrade attacks. Explore our encryption stack.