Re: SSL RC4 challenge

From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>

Here is a challenge to try breaking SSL using the default exportable encryption mode, 40-bit RC4. [...]

It has been pointed out to me that I made a mistake in my analysis of the SSL packets. The MAC at the beginning of the encrypted packets is itself RC4 encrypted. That means that the 17 bytes of known plaintext start 16 bytes into the stream, not at the beginning as I thought. This just means that after key setup, RC4 has to be cycled 16 times before we start comparing its output with the XOR of the known plaintext and ciphertext. I'll produce a revision of my "challenge". If no other mistakes are found I'll post it to sci.crypt. Hal