RC4

Category: Ciphers

Status: Registered and callable in the CyberChef 11.3.0 compatibility inventory.

Input / output: string → string

Background: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/RC4

What it does

RC4 (also known as ARC4) is a widely-used stream cipher designed by Ron Rivest. It is used in popular protocols such as SSL and WEP. Although remarkable for its simplicity and speed, the algorithm’s history doesn’t inspire confidence in its security.

Note

Status here means the operation name is implemented and callable. It does not by itself promise byte-for-byte parity for every upstream option. See Compatibility and current status for the verified scope and known boundaries.

Arguments and options

Arguments are positional. Keep their order when using bake() or Pipeline.then().

Index	Name	UI type	PyChef default	Accepted values / format
`0`	Passphrase	`toggleString`	`{'string': '', 'option': 'UTF8'}`	`''`
`1`	Input format	`option`	`'Latin1'`	`'Latin1'`, `'UTF8'`, `'UTF16'`, `'UTF16LE'`, `'UTF16BE'`, `'Hex'`, `'Base64'`
`2`	Output format	`option`	`'Latin1'`	`'Latin1'`, `'UTF8'`, `'UTF16'`, `'UTF16LE'`, `'UTF16BE'`, `'Hex'`, `'Base64'`

Recipe template

Important

This is a call template built from the documented defaults. Replace placeholder values such as empty keys, paths, patterns, or lookup data before running it.

from pychef import bake

input_value = "example"
args = [{'string': '', 'option': 'UTF8'}, 'Latin1', 'Latin1']
result = bake(input_value, [{"op": 'RC4', "args": args}])
print(result)

Pipeline example

from pychef import Pipeline

args = [{'string': '', 'option': 'UTF8'}, 'Latin1', 'Latin1']
transform = Pipeline().then('RC4', *args)
result = transform("example")

Dedicated operation module

The registered entry point lives in pychef.operations.by_operation.rc4. Direct calls receive the input value and a positional argument tuple:

from pychef.operations.by_operation.rc4 import run

result = run("example", tuple([{'string': '', 'option': 'UTF8'}, 'Latin1', 'Latin1']))

pychef.operations.by_operation.rc4.run(value, args)

Run this operation using its shared internal implementation.

Parameters:

value (str | bytes)
args (Sequence[Any])

Return type:

str | bytes