Identifying the RC4 encryption algorithm

The RC4 algorithm is one of the most common encryption algorithms that is used by malware authors, mainly because it is simple and at the same time strong enough to not be broken like other simple encryption algorithms. It is not available as a WinAPI, so malware authors generally implement it manually. This means it may be hard for novice reverse engineers to identify. In this section, we will see what this algorithm looks like and how you can identify it.