In-class laboratory

CMSC 414

Fall 2011

This in-class exercise will teach you about symmetric encryption and decryption. You will implement, in the programming language of your choice, the RC4 symmetric encryption algorithm. You will use your code to decrypt a file located at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~waa/414-F11/ciphertext.bin. The file is a binary file so you’ll need to ensure you download it correctly.

The plaintext of the file above contains further instructions for you to complete this lab.

For your reference, details of the RC4 algorithm can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RC4

NOTES

Your code should not be more than 50 lines, unless you’re using assembler, and even then I think you might be able to squeeze it under.

There are lots of implementations of RC4 searchable by Google. You must write this project. Utilizing ANY existing source or program will constitute academic dishonesty.