Attacks on the RC4 stream cipher

Klein, Andreas

doi:10.1007/s10623-008-9206-6

Cited by 146 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…• In Section 3.3, we observe new biases in the initial keystream bytes apart from the known ones [5]. It is shown that for 3 ≤ r ≤ 32, P (z r = f r−1 ) are not random associations.…”

Section: Notations Contributions and Outlinementioning

confidence: 90%

“…Some results for biases in initial keystream bytes has earlier been pointed out in [5] that has later been discussed in [19] too. We detail these biases giving explicit formula under our theoretical framework.…”

mentioning

confidence: 83%

“…A more general theoretical study has been performed in [11,12] which includes the observations of [17]. These biases do propagate to the keystream output bytes as observed in [5,11]. In [5], the Glimpse theorem [4] is used to show the propagation of biases in the initial keystream output bytes.…”

Section: Swap(s[i] S[j]); T = S[i] + S[j]; Output Z = S[t];mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These biases do propagate to the keystream output bytes as observed in [5,11]. In [5], the Glimpse theorem [4] is used to show the propagation of biases in the initial keystream output bytes. On the other hand, a bias in the choice of index has been exploited in [11] to show a bias in the first keystream output byte.…”

Section: Swap(s[i] S[j]); T = S[i] + S[j]; Output Z = S[t];mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Being one of the popular stream ciphers, it has also been subjected to many cryptanalytic attempts for more than a decade. Though lots of weaknesses have already been explored in RC4 [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11,12,13,15,16,17,19,20,21], it could not be thoroughly cracked yet and proper use of this stream cipher is still believed to be quite secure. This motivates the analysis of RC4.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

New Form of Permutation Bias and Secret Key Leakage in Keystream Bytes of RC4

Maitra

Paul

Fast Software Encryption

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Consider the permutation S in RC4. Roos pointed out in 1995 that after the Key Scheduling Algorithm (KSA) of RC4, each of the initial bytes of the permutation, i.e., S [y] for small values of y, is biased towards some linear combination of the secret key bytes. In this paper, for the first time we show that the bias can be observed in S [S[y]] too. Based on this new form of permutation bias after the KSA and other related results, a complete framework is presented to show that many keystream output bytes of RC4 are significantly biased towards several linear combinations of the secret key bytes. The results do not assume any condition on the secret key. We find new biases in the initial as well as in the 256-th and 257-th keystream output bytes. For the first time biases at such later stages are discovered without any knowledge of the secret key bytes. We also identify that these biases propagate further, once the information for the index j is revealed.

show abstract

Section: Notations Contributions and Outlinementioning

confidence: 90%

mentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Swap(s[i] S[j]); T = S[i] + S[j]; Output Z = S[t];mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Swap(s[i] S[j]); T = S[i] + S[j]; Output Z = S[t];mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

New Form of Permutation Bias and Secret Key Leakage in Keystream Bytes of RC4

Maitra

Paul

Fast Software Encryption

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

A survey of lightweight stream ciphers for embedded systems

Manifavas

Hatzivasilis

Fysarakis

et al. 2015

Security Comm. Networks

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pervasive computing constitutes a growing trend, aiming to embed smart devices into everyday objects. The limited resources of these devices and the ever‐present need for lower production costs, lead to the research and development of lightweight cryptographic mechanisms. Block ciphers, the main symmetric key cryptosystems, perform well in this field. Nevertheless, stream ciphers are also relevant in ubiquitous computing applications, as they can be used to secure the communication in applications where the plaintext length is either unknown or continuous, like network streams. This paper provides the latest survey of stream ciphers for embedded systems. Lightweight implementations of stream ciphers in embedded hardware and software are examined as well as relevant authenticated encryption schemes. Their speed and simplicity enable compact and low‐power implementations, allow them to excel in applications pertaining to resource‐constrained devices. The outcomes of the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission 29192‐3 standard and the cryptographic competitions eSTREAM and Competition for Authenticated Encryption: Security, Applicability, and Robustness are summarized along with the latest results in the field. However, cryptanalysis has proven many of these schemes are actually insecure. From the 31 designs that are examined, only six of them have been found to be secure by independent cryptanalysis. A constrained benchmark analysis is performed on low‐cost embedded hardware and software platforms. The most appropriate and secure solutions are then mapped in different types of applications. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

show abstract

A lightweight secure data transmission protocol for resource constrained devices

2009

Security Comm Networks

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we present a lightweight but robust security protocol based on the forward and backward property of RC4 stream cipher. The proposed protocol offers data confidentiality, data authentication, data integrity, and data freshness with less operation and low overhead. Also, it allows data packets to be received in any arbitrary order and achieves semantic security. Furthermore, it eliminates the requirement of frequent key renewal to overcome a special limitation of the stream ciphers. Due to the competitive efficiency and lightweight, the proposed protocol is considerable to provide secure data transmission among resource constrained devices, where the communication nodes have limited power resources and computational capabilities. This protocol not only applies to one-to-one communications, but also works for the broadcasting and multicasting.

show abstract

Attacks on the RC4 stream cipher

Cited by 146 publications

References 9 publications

New Form of Permutation Bias and Secret Key Leakage in Keystream Bytes of RC4

New Form of Permutation Bias and Secret Key Leakage in Keystream Bytes of RC4

A survey of lightweight stream ciphers for embedded systems

A lightweight secure data transmission protocol for resource constrained devices

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About