Abstract
The RC4+ stream cipher was proposed by Maitra and Paul at Indocrypt 2008. The authors had claimed that RC4+ ironed out most of the weaknesses of the alleged RC4 stream cipher and was only marginally slower than RC4 in software. In this paper we show that it is possible to mount a distinguishing attack on RC4+ based on the bias of the first output byte. The distinguisher requires around 226 samples produced by different keys of RC4+. In the second part of the paper we study the possibility of mounting the differential fault attack on RC4 proposed by Biham et. al. in FSE 2005, on RC4+. We will show that that the RC4+ is vulnerable to differential fault attack and it is possible to recover the entire internal state of the cipher at the beginning of the PRGA by injecting around 217.2 faults.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Biham, E., Granboulan, L., Nguyen, P.Q.: Impossible Fault Analysis of RC4 and Differential Fault Analysis of RC4. In: Gilbert, H., Handschuh, H. (eds.) FSE 2005. LNCS, vol. 3557, pp. 359–367. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Das, A., Maitra, S., Paul, G., Sarkar, S.: Some Combinatorial Results towards State Recovery Attack on RC4. In: Jajodia, S., Mazumdar, C. (eds.) ICISS 2011. LNCS, vol. 7093, pp. 204–214. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Finney, H.: An RC4 cycle that can’t happen. Posting to sci.crypt (September 1994)
Gong, G., Gupta, K.C., Hell, M., Nawaz, Y.: Towards a General RC4-Like Keystream Generator. In: Feng, D., Lin, D., Yung, M. (eds.) CISC 2005. LNCS, vol. 3822, pp. 162–174. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Maitra, S., Paul, G.: Analysis of RC4 and Proposal of Additional Layers for Better Security Margin. In: Chowdhury, D.R., Rijmen, V., Das, A. (eds.) INDOCRYPT 2008. LNCS, vol. 5365, pp. 27–39. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Mantin, I., Shamir, A.: A Practical Attack on Broadcast RC4. In: Matsui, M. (ed.) FSE 2001. LNCS, vol. 2355, pp. 152–164. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Maximov, A.: Two Linear Distinguishing Attacks on VMPC and RC4A and Weakness of RC4 Family of Stream Ciphers. In: Gilbert, H., Handschuh, H. (eds.) FSE 2005. LNCS, vol. 3557, pp. 342–358. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Maximov, A., Khovratovich, D.: New State Recovery Attack on RC4. In: Wagner, D. (ed.) CRYPTO 2008. LNCS, vol. 5157, pp. 297–316. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Nawaz, Y., Gupta, K.C., Gong, G.: A 32-bit RC4-like Keystream Generator. IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive 2005, 175 (2005)
Paul, S., Preneel, B.: A New Weakness in the RC4 Keystream Generator and an Approach to Improve the Security of the Cipher. In: Roy, B., Meier, W. (eds.) FSE 2004. LNCS, vol. 3017, pp. 245–259. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Paul, S., Preneel, B.: On the (In)security of Stream Ciphers Based on Arrays and Modular Addition. In: Lai, X., Chen, K. (eds.) ASIACRYPT 2006. LNCS, vol. 4284, pp. 69–83. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Tsunoo, Y., Saito, T., Kubo, H., Shigeri, M., Suzaki, T., Kawabata, T.: The Most Efficient Distinguishing Attack on VMPC and RC4A. In: SKEW (2005), http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/stream/papers.html
Tsunoo, Y., Saito, T., Kubo, H., Suzaki, T.: A Distinguishing Attack on a Fast Software-Implemented RC4-Like Stream Cipher. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 53(9), 3250–3255 (2007)
Zoltak, B.: VMPC One-Way Function and Stream Cipher. In: Roy, B., Meier, W. (eds.) FSE 2004. LNCS, vol. 3017, pp. 210–225. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Banik, S., Sarkar, S., Kacker, R. (2013). Security Analysis of the RC4+ Stream Cipher. In: Paul, G., Vaudenay, S. (eds) Progress in Cryptology – INDOCRYPT 2013. INDOCRYPT 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8250. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03515-4_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03515-4_20
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-03514-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-03515-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)