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From: bl...@aol.com (Blue J)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: When was RC4 posted?
Date: 6 Dec 1994 18:35:51 -0500
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Can someone recall the exact date that RC4 was posted?  I'm doing some
research.

thanks,

Jonathan Bird

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From: ra...@kiwi.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Raph Levien)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: When was RC4 posted?
Date: 7 Dec 1994 01:24:03 GMT
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In article <3c2sgn$a...@newsbf01.news.aol.com>, Blue J <bl...@aol.com> wrote:
>Can someone recall the exact date that RC4 was posted?  I'm doing some
>research.

The famous event was the anonymous post of the alleged RC4 sources to
the cypherpunks mailing list the evening of Fri 9 Sep 1994.
Coincidentally, this was the eve of the cypherpunks meeting, so we all
got to talk about it then. Later, there were stories in the NYT and
WSJ.

It was not posted to Usenet until perhaps a couple of weeks later,
again using an anonymous remailer.

However, this is not the complete story. Someone (I don't remember
who) has made the claim that RC4 was described some months earlier in
a lecture in England. The code was posted to some UK-specific crypto
newsgroup. For whatever reason, this created no stir at the time.

If your research leads to anything concrete (like a paper), I'd like
to see it.

Raph

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From: ra...@cs.berkeley.edu (Raph Levien)
Subject: Re: When was RC4 posted?
References: <3c2sgn$a7k@newsbf01.news.aol.com>
	<3c32rj$b1j@agate.berkeley.edu>
	<9412070128.AA16384@monty.rand.org>
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 09:40:38 +0000
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Jim Gillogly writes:
 > In article <3c32rj$b...@agate.berkeley.edu> you write:
 > >the cypherpunks mailing list the evening of Fri 9 Sep 1994.
 > >
 > >It was not posted to Usenet until perhaps a couple of weeks later,
 > 
 > 13 Sep 94 -- it just <seemed> like a couple of weeks.
 > -- 
 > 	Jim Gillogly
 > 	Highday, 17 Foreyule S.R. 1994, 01:28

Oh yeah, you're right. For remailer trivia buffs, the release to the
cpunks list was done with the jpunix remailer, creating a brief panic
for John Perry, who runs that remailer. The sci.crypt post was sent
through the vox remailer. The code is presently available from:

ftp://ftp.dsi.unimi.it/pub/security/crypt/code/rc4.revealed.gz
ftp://ftp.dsi.unimi.it/pub/security/crypt/code/rc4.schneier.test.gz

Raph

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From: vinc...@c700-2.sm.dsi.unimi.it (david vincenzetti)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: When was RC4 posted?
Date: 16 Dec 1994 18:51:53 +0100
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bl...@aol.com (Blue J) writes:

>Can someone recall the exact date that RC4 was posted?  I'm doing some
>research.

Available in the following directory:

	ftp://ftp.dsi.unimi.it/pub/security/crypt

Regards,
David