Statistical Analysis of the Alleged RC4 Keystream Generator

  • Authors:
  • Scott R. Fluhrer;David A. McGrew

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • FSE '00 Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

The alleged RC4 keystream generator is examined, and a method of explicitly computing digraph probabilities is given. Using this method, we demonstrate a method for distinguishing 8-bit RC4 from randomness. Our method requires less keystream output than currently published attacks, requiring only 230:6 bytes of output. In addition, we observe that an attacker can, on occasion, determine portions of the internal state with nontrivial probability. However, we are currently unable to extend this observation to a full attack.