Stream Ciphers pp 183-228 | Cite as

RC4 and Related Ciphers

  • Andreas Klein
Chapter

Abstract

RC4 is a widely used cipher designed for 8-bit processors. It is part of the wireless LAN standards WEP and WPA. The chapter starts with the analysis of these protocols and show how protocol failures helps the attacker. Then we analyse RC4 in detail with a special focus on the weak key scheduling. We will learn how to break RC4 if carelessly used and we will learn how to use it in a secure way. We will also have a look on some variations of RC4 and see how to transfer attacks against RC4 to its variants.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag London 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Andreas Klein
    • 1
  1. 1.Dept. of Pure Mathem. & Computer AlgebraState University of GhentGhentBelgium

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