Quantum Quest: Resource Requirement of RC4 Cryptanalysis under Grover’s Lens
Sarbani Sen, Soumen Bajpayee, Imon Mukherjee, Goutam Paul, Bhupendra Singh · 2024
The RC4 cipher is a widely used software stream cipher which has long stood as a cornerstone in cryptographic applications due to its design simplicity, speed and efficiency. In this paper, we present an approach to decrypt RC4-encrypted data by leveraging Grover’s quantum search algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first documented attempt to employ Grover’s algorithm in breaking RC4 encryption. We enumerate the quantum resources required to perform exhaustive key search attack on RC4. Our approach demonstrates the potential of quantum computing to revolutionize cryptanalysis.