Abstract
We present three categories of new non-randomness results on RC4 here. First, using Jenkins’ Glimpse result (1996), we show that for every round, the key-stream value comes from a distant permutation array (S-Box) byte position with a probability higher than the fair chance. Moreover, we show how the Jenkins’ Glimpse gets modified when the two consecutive output keystream bytes are equal to a certain value. Second, we show that corresponding to every Fluhrer-McGrew bias (2000), the key-stream value for each of the two rounds comes from certain array positions with a higher (or a lower) probability than the uniform one, depending upon whether the double-byte is positively or negatively biased. Also, there are four “lag-one digraph” (or alternate pair double-byte) biases that have been summarized in a recent paper. We show that for each of these cases, there are preferred positions of permutation array byte corresponding to the key-stream value in that round. Third, we show that in each of the Fluhrer-McGrew or lag-one cases, the Jenkins’ correlation results must be refined. Surprisingly, in one particular configuration, the Glimpse correlation value becomes almost \(\frac{4}{N}\) instead of Jenkins’ \(\frac{2}{N}\).
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Acknowledgments
The authors like to thank the anonymous reviewers for detailed comments that helped in improving the editorial as well as technical quality of this paper. The second author acknowledges the support from project “Cryptography & Cryptanalysis: How far can we bridge the gap between Classical and Quantum Paradigm”, awarded by the Scientific Research Council of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE-SRC), the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS) during 2016–2021.
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Chakraborty, P., Maitra, S. (2020). More Glimpses of the RC4 Internal State Array. In: Bhargavan, K., Oswald, E., Prabhakaran, M. (eds) Progress in Cryptology – INDOCRYPT 2020. INDOCRYPT 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12578. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65277-7_13
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