Securing data transmission over wireless LAN (802.11) by redesigning RC4 Algorithm

RC4 Algorithm is a stream cipher algorithm for securing wireless networks specifically wireless LAN (Wi-Fi). The core of RC4 Algorithm is the KSA and PRGA algorithm. In the past years, many attacks on RC4 have been published, totally breaking RC4´s security. This paper intended to provide an additional layer of security over RC4 to provide better security to RC4 Algorithm and to overcome the known weaknesses of RC4. This paper begins by introducing the RC4 algorithm. The introductory section gives detailed description on the architecture and design of RC4 algorithm. In this paper to determine the security threats on RC4, this research deeply analyze the weaknesses of RC4. The paper will then demonstrate some known attacks on RC4. This paper proposes three important enhancements over the original RC4 Algorithm. First one is the modification to the original RC4 algorithm to make it more secure and even faster. Second one is a novel approach to increase the size of the initial vector without increasing the overall size of the 64 bit session key generally used in RC4 Algorithm. Third one is providing a provision to dynamically change the secret key before getting any possibility to crack the secret key from the encrypted data packets. We also analyzed the results of our proposed algorithm to many other previous modifications on RC4. Results shows that our algorithm provides much better security as well as encryption time efficiency than the previous works done on RC4.