Microsoft: Win10 Edge and IE11 and other mainstream browsers will stop supporting RC4 encryption algorithm in early 2016

  

September 3, in addition to Microsoft's announcement, Google and Mozilla also announced that they will stop supporting RC4 early next year. Mozilla will phase out RC4 when Firefox 44 is released on January 26, 2016.

RC4 Encryption Algorithm

RC4 is a variable-length stream encryption algorithm designed by American cryptographer Ronald · Ron Rivest in 1987. But early on, people realized that there is a loophole in the RC4 encryption algorithm. In 2013, scientists have designed an attack method that exploits this vulnerability, but it takes 2,000 hours to crack.

Nowadays, with the advancement of technology, the time required for cracking is getting shorter and shorter, and the current cracking time has been reduced from thousands of hours to several days. Therefore, major browser vendors finally decided to stop supporting the RC4 algorithm.

Microsoft recommends that Web services that are still using the RC4 algorithm abandon this algorithm as soon as possible. (via: Microsoft)

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