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Add RC4 (Rivest Cipher 4) stream cipher to ciphers/#14711

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Add RC4 (Rivest Cipher 4) stream cipher to ciphers/#14711
dipeshrayg wants to merge 6 commits into
TheAlgorithms:masterfrom
dipeshrayg:master

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@dipeshrayg dipeshrayg commented May 22, 2026

Describe your change:

Implements the RC4 (Rivest Cipher 4) stream cipher in ciphers/rc4_cipher.py.

RC4 is a symmetric stream cipher historically used in SSL/TLS and WEP, now deprecated due to known statistical biases. This implementation covers:

  • Key Scheduling Algorithm (KSA)
  • Pseudo-Random Generation Algorithm (PRGA)
  • Encrypt and decrypt functions with full round-trip verification

Added for educational purposes with a clear security warning.

  • Add an algorithm?
  • Fix a bug or typo in an existing algorithm?
  • Documentation change?

Checklist:

  • I have read CONTRIBUTING.md.
  • This pull request is all my own work -- I have not plagiarized.
  • I know that pull requests will not be merged if they fail the automated tests.
  • This PR only changes one algorithm file. To ease review, please open separate pull requests for separate algorithms.
  • All new Python files are placed inside an existing directory.
  • All filenames are in all lowercase characters with no spaces or dashes.
  • All functions and variable names follow Python naming conventions.
  • All function parameters and return values are annotated with Python type hints.
  • All functions have doctests that pass the automated testing.
  • All new algorithms include at least one URL that points to Wikipedia or another similar explanation.
  • If this pull request resolves one or more open issues then the description above includes the issue number(s) with a closing keyword: "Fixes #ISSUE_NUMBER".

@algorithms-keeper algorithms-keeper Bot added awaiting reviews This PR is ready to be reviewed tests are failing Do not merge until tests pass labels May 22, 2026
dipeshrayg and others added 2 commits May 22, 2026 09:22
Remove detailed docstring and example usage from rc4_cipher.py for brevity.
@dipeshrayg dipeshrayg closed this May 22, 2026
@dipeshrayg dipeshrayg reopened this May 22, 2026
@dipeshrayg dipeshrayg closed this May 22, 2026
@dipeshrayg dipeshrayg reopened this May 22, 2026
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