RC4c : A Secured Way to View Data Transmission in Wireless Communication Networks

Abstract

In spite of several crypto analytical criticisms on RC4 data encryption algorithm, its simplicity, speed has made it one of the popular encryption techniques employ in wireless communication networks. However, in recent time many experts no longer consider RC4 secure against attacks. This is due to some vulnerability detected through repetition of keys over a period of time. This exposes the weakness of the exclusive OR operator on which the RC4 technique is anchored. In recent time, another variant of RC4 was developed called RC42s. This encryption algorithm innovatively solves the problem of mutual exclusive of XOR operator in RC4; however, the experimental result shows the improvement rate of 68% over RC4. That is, 32% of encrypted messages are susceptible to hacking whenever there is key collision. In this paper, a novel method is developed to counter the negative effect of the mutual exclusiveness of the functional operator on RC4 and RC42s. The new technique called RC4c uses 2s complement and shifting operation to give a perfect and secured data encryption technique for wireless network. Performance analysis on speed and effect of mutual exclusiveness of XOR on RC4, RC42s and RC4c security was done. It was discovered that RC4c not only completely nullifies the weakness introduced by mutual exclusiveness of XOR in RC4 and RC42s but maintains the simplicity and throughput of the RC4 and RC42s.