Attacks against RC4 when index $i$ is unknown RC4 uses two 8-bit indices. One, $j$, is key-dependent and secret, and the other, $i$, increments by one for each byte output. The $i$ index is typically considered to be public, but what if the RC4 keystream starts at an unknown position, putting $i$ anywhere in the range of $0$ to $255$ with equal probability? I can think of a few inefficient and naïve techniques, but what would be the most efficient technique to discover $i$?
The most efficient way I can think of (not that it's all that practical) is to take a very long section of the keystream (think a Gigabyte+), and check it against the known RC4 digraph statistics; some of these biases (actually, most of them) depend on the value of i, and so the value of i that is correct will show up as more strongly biased than incorrect values.

The practical downside is that it requires a lot of keystream; on the other hand, it is computationally efficient (and works even if the RC4 key is large)