Efficient reconstruction of RC4 keys from internal states

Abstract

In this paper we present an efficient algorithm for the retrieval of the RC4 secret key, given an internal state. This algorithm is several orders of magnitude faster than previously published algorithms. In the case of a 40-bit key, it takes only about 0.02 seconds to retrieve the key, with success probability of 86.4%. Even if the algorithm cannot retrieve the entire key, it can retrieve partial information about the key. The key can also be retrieved if some of the bytes of the initial permutation are incorrect or missing. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.