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Re: Is AES better than RC4

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James A. Donald)
Wed May 24 07:52:59 2006

X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 19:51:16 +1000
From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
To: Max <maxale@gmail.com>
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <d3dac270605231821q5cd1ef60gc43e2f28a941475a@mail.gmail.com>

     --
James A. Donald
 >> 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.

Max wrote:
 > I'm confused. AES is a _block_ cipher while RC4 is a
 > _stream_ cipher. How are you going to compare them?

The question is, what is likely to be secure (assuming
no errors in the code or protocol, assuming the protocol
accommodates the known weaknesses of RC4.

     --digsig
          James A. Donald
      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
      r+jgJN/UZnI2Ndd0y5iy/yo4PpzCqxx4/Ouqmr0y
      42RAM+28IfhN9Xrs5LS5o3jt9p73L5MSyLOzwwWT4

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