New Weak Keys with Parity Patterns in the RC4 Stream Cipher
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The RC4 cryptographic algorithm is the most extensively studied stream cipher of the past two decades. This extensive research has resulted in numerous publications, many of which identify various vulnerabilities. Although these vulnerabilities do not preclude the correct use of the algorithm, they complicate its practical implementation. In this paper, we present a novel weakness in the RC4 cipher. Our findings indicate that, for input keys exhibiting certain patterns, the parity of the values in the output permutation of the KSA can be determined with high probability from the parity of its position in the output permutation. Furthermore, the use of keys with these specific patterns leads to noticeable distortions in several bytes of the RC4 output.Keywords:
RC4
Parity (physics)
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Slide attack
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RC4(n, m) is a stream cipher based on RC4 and is designed by G. Gong et al. It can be seen as a generalization of the famous RC4 stream cipher designed by Ron Rivest. The authors of RC4(n, m) claim that the cipher resists all the attacks that are successful against the original RC4.
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When used in application, RC4 cipher technology has some problems, such as weak keys and related key attacks, invariance weakness,,byte bias and so on.This paper presents an improved RC4 cipher technology, which combines the ECC cipher and the RC4 stream cipher.Theemphasis is analyzing the efficiency, the management of keys, and the capability of the improved RC4 cipher.The result indicates that the efficiencyof the improved RC4 is just a litter lower than RC4 stream cipher while the security is much better than RC4.It has good repellency of the currentattacks which aim at RC4 stream cipher.What is more, the improved RC4 cipher has a good way to solve the problems about key management andkey update, which is very significant in application.
RC4
Transposition cipher
Two-square cipher
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RC4 is the most widely used stream cipher around. A lot of modifications of RC4 cipher can be seen in open literature. Most of them enhance the secrecy of the cipher and the security levels have been analyzed theoretically by using mathematics. In this paper, a new effective RC4 cipher is proposed and the security analysis has been done using Shannon's Secrecy theories where numerical values are obtained to depict the secrecy. The proposed cipher is a combination of Improved RC4 cipher proposed by Jian Xie et al and modified RC4 cipher proposed by T.D.B Weerasinghe, which were published prior to this work. Combination is done in such a way that the concept used in the modified RC4 algorithm is used in the Improved RC4 cipher by Jian Xie et al. Importantly, an immense improvement of performance and secrecy are obtained by this combination. Hence this particular modification of RC4 cipher can be used in software applications where there is a need to improve the throughput as well as secrecy.
RC4
Transposition cipher
Two-square cipher
Affine cipher
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RC4 has remained the most popular software stream cipher since the last two decades. In parallel to cryptanalytic attempts, researchers have come up with many variants of RC4, some targeted to more security, some towards more throughput. We observe that the design of RC4 has been changed a lot in most of the variants. Since the RC4 structure is quite secure if the cipher is used with proper precautions, an arbitrary change in the design may lead to potential vulnerabilities, such as the distinguishing attack (Tsunoo et al., 2007) on the word-oriented variant GGHN (Gong et al., 2005). Some variants keep the RC4 structure (Maitra et al., 2008), but is byte-oriented and hence is an overkill for modern wide-word processors. In this paper, we try to combine the best of both the worlds. We keep the basic RC4 structure which guarantees reasonable security (if properly used) and we combine 4 RC4 states tacitly to design a high throughput stream cipher called Quad-RC4 that produces 32- bit output at every round. The storage requirement for the internal state is only 1024 bits. In terms of speed, this cipher performs much faster than normal RC4 and is comparable with HC-128, the fastest software stream cipher amongst the eSTREAM nalists. We also discuss the issue of generalizing the structure of Quad-RC4 to higher word-width variants.
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In 2005, Gong proposed an RC4-like stream cipher capable of fast operation on a 32/64-bit processor. This stream cipher solved the RC4 problem of difficult 32/64-bit processing, a problem once thought impossible to solve. Operation of the cipher on 32- and 64-bit processors is about 3.1 and 6.2 times as fast, respectively, as that of the RC4 cipher. However, we have found a considerable bias in the output sequence of the RC4-like stream cipher. Using the bias along with the first two words of a keystream associated with approximately 2 30 secret keys allows us to build a distinguisher.
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RC4 was used as an encryption algorithm in WEP(Wired Equivalent Privacy) protocol that is a standardized for 802.11 wireless network. A few attacks followed, indicating certain weakness in the design. In this paper, we proposed a new variant of RC4 stream cipher. The new version of the cipher does not only appear to be more secure, but its keystream also has large period, large complexity and good statistical properties.
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Affine cipher
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