An obfuscated implementation of RC4

Abstract

Because of its simplicity, ease of implementation, and speed, RC4 is one of the most widely used software oriented stream ciphers. It is used in several popular protocols such as SSL and it has also been integrated into many applications and software such as Microsoft Windows, Lotus Notes, Oracle Secure SQL and Skype. In this paper, we present an obfuscated implementation for RC4. In addition to investigating different practical obfuscation techniques that are suitable for the cipher structure, we also perform a comparison between the performance of these different techniques. Our implementation provides a high degree of robustness against attacks from execution environments where the adversary has access to the software implementation such as in digital right management applications. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.