[592] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: The unmentionable algorithm
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Sat Apr 19 18:28:27 1997
To: jamesd@echeque.com
cc: coderpunks@toad.com, cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 19 Apr 1997 14:24:04 +0800."
<199704192124.OAA04717@proxy2.ba.best.com>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 18:23:45 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
jamesd@echeque.com writes:
> RC4 seems to me clearly superior to all other symmetric
> key algorithms. Its elegant simplicity makes it unlikely
> that there is some hidden flaw that no one has yet discovered,
> and it has withstood concentrated and vigorous attack by many
> great cryptographers, and it is very fast.
I believe a paper on linear weaknesses in RC4 is being presented at
the next Eurocrypt (or is it Crypto; I forget).
RC4 is "neat", but if you really need something strong and you don't
need more than a few mbps of speed, 3DES certainly has far more study
behind it than RC4.
Perry
