[26348] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Is AES better than RC4
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Max)
Wed May 24 07:52:23 2006
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 18:21:48 -0700
From: Max <maxale@gmail.com>
To: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <44738991.2090707@echeque.com>
On 5/23/06, James A. Donald <jamesd@echeque.com> wrote:
> AES is new, and people keep claiming progress towards
> breaking it, without however, so far producing any
> breaks.
>
> RC4 is old and has numerous known weaknesses, which are
> tricky to code around, and have caught many an
> implementor - notice for example Wifi. But these are
> known weaknesses, and no new ones have turned up for
> some time, nor does it seem likely that they will.
I'm confused.
AES is a _block_ cipher while RC4 is a _stream_ cipher. How are you
going to compare them?
It is makes much more sense to compare AES to RC6 block cipher (if you
like something from the RC-family of ciphers) but that was already
done by the AES standard committee. RC6 became one of the five
finalists but then lost the race to Rijndael. Look at the details of
AES selection process if interested.
Max
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