Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?

Andy Brown (Andy.Brown@nexor.co.uk)
Mon, 24 Aug 1998 16:39:32 +0100

• Next message: Jim Gillogly: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• Previous message: mgraffam@mhv.net: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• In reply to: Andy Brown: "What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• Next in thread: Derek Atkins: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• Reply: Derek Atkins: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"

Michael J. Graffam wrote:

> Well, I'm not completely sure how to answer the question because I don't
> know what you mean by 'level of security'

I think you misunderstand the question, but then you do hint to that... By
"3 key RC4-40" I mean RC4-40 used like triple DES, i.e. applied 3 times
successively with 3 separate keys. I haven't seen any research on how
stream ciphers such as RC4 benefit from this tactic, if they benefit at all.

> of how easy it would be to crack 40-bit RC4, a com sci student from France
> did it in like 3 months using CPU time on a bunch of machines at his
> school.

I know, I was involved in organizing the internet distributed crack at the
same time :-)

Not using MS-CAPI is not an option, unfortunately.

Regards,

- Andy

• Next message: Jim Gillogly: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• Previous message: mgraffam@mhv.net: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• In reply to: Andy Brown: "What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• Next in thread: Derek Atkins: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"
• Reply: Derek Atkins: "Re: What benefit would there be in using triple RC4-40?"