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RC4 was designed by Ron Rivest of RSA Security in 1987; while it is officially termed "Rivest Cipher 4", the RC acronym is alternatively understood to stand for "Ron's Code" (see also RC2, RC5 and RC6).
RC4 was initially a trade secret, but in September 1994 a description of it was anonymously posted to the Cypherpunks mailing list. It was soon posted on the sci.crypt newsgroup, and from there to many sites on the Internet. Because the algorithm is known, it is no longer a trade secret. The name "RC4" is trademarked, however. The current status seems to be that "unofficial" implementations are legal, but cannot use the RC4 name. RC4 is often referred to as "ARCFOUR" (Alleged-RC4, because RSA has never officially released the algorithm), to avoid possible trademark problems. It has become part of some commonly used encryption protocols and standards, including WEP and WPA for wireless cards and SSL.
The main factors which helped its deployment over such a wide range of applications consisted in its impressive speed and simplicity. Implementations in both software and hardware are very easy to develop, and very few resources are required to efficiently use arcfour.
Other related archives1987, 1994, 802.11, CipherSaber, Cypherpunks, HMAC, IEEE 802.11i, Internet, RC2, RC5, RC6, RSA Security, Ron Rivest, Route Coloniale 4, SSL,
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page |
