Analysis of RC4 and Proposal of Additional Layers for Better Security Margin

  • Authors:
  • Subhamoy Maitra;Goutam Paul

  • Affiliations:
  • Indian Statistical Institute, Applied Statistics Unit, Kolkata, India 700 108;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India 700 032

  • Venue:
  • INDOCRYPT '08 Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Cryptology in India: Progress in Cryptology
  • Year:
  • 2008
  • MARC: modified ARC4

    FPS'12 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Foundations and Practice of Security

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

In this paper, the RC4 Key Scheduling Algorithm (KSA) is theoretically studied to reveal non-uniformity in the expected number of times each value of the permutation is touched by the indices i , j . Based on our analysis and the results available in the literature regarding the existing weaknesses of RC4, few additional layers over the RC4 KSA and RC4 Pseudo-Random Generation Algorithm (PRGA) are proposed. Analysis of the modified cipher (we call it RC4 + ) shows that this new strategy avoids existing weaknesses of RC4.