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RC6

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security

Synonyms

Rivest cipher 6; Ron’s code 6

Related Concepts

AES Candidate; Block Ciphers; Symmetric Cryptography

Definition

RC6 is an iterative secret-key block cipher designed by Rivest, Robshaw, Sidney, and Yin [6] in 1998. It has variable parameters such as the key size, the block size, and the number of rounds. A particular (parameterized) RC6 encryption algorithm is designated as RC6 (w, r, b), where w is the word size (one block is made of four words), r is the number of rounds, and b is the number of bytes for the secret key.

Background

In 1997, the American National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a competition for an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to replace their aging Data Encryption Standard (DES). RC6 is one of the five finalists of the contest, and its design is inspired and derived from its predecessor RC5. It was also submitted to the European NESSIE project and to the Japanese CRYPTREC project.

Theory

The three “nominal” choices for the algorithm...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Contini S, Rivest RL, Robshaw MJB, Yin YL (1999) Improved analysis of some simplified variants of RC6. In: Knudsen LR (ed) Fast software encryption – seventh international workshop. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1636. Springer, Berlin, pp 1–15

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  2. Gilbert H, Handschuh H, Joux A, Vaudenay S (2000) A statistical attack on RC6. In: Schneier B (ed) Fast software encryption – seventh international workshop. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1978. Springer, Berlin, pp 64–74

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  3. Iwata T, Kurosawa K (2000) On the pseudorandomness of the AES finalists – RC6 and serpent. In: Schneier B (ed) Fast software encryption – seventh international workshop. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1978. Springer, Berlin, pp 231–243

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  4. Knudsen LR, Meier W (2000) Correlations in RC6 with a reduced number of rounds. In: Schneier B (ed) Fast software encryption – seventh international workshop. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1978. Springer, Berlin, pp 94–108

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  5. Miyaji A, Nonaka M (2002) Cryptanalysis of the reduced-round RC6. In: Deng R, Qing S, Bao F, Zhou J (eds) ICICS’2002. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 2513. Springer, Berlin, pp 480–494

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  6. Rivest RL, Robshaw MJB, Sidney R, Yin YL (1998) The RC6 block cipher. AES – The First Advanced Encryption Standard Candidate Conference, Conference Proceedings, NIST, 1998

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  7. Shimoyama T, Takenaka M, Koshiba T (2002) Multiple linear cryptanalysis of a reduced round RC6. In: Dalmen J, Rijmen V (eds) Fast software encryption – ninth international workshop. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 2365. Springer, Berlin, pp 76–88

    Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography Research Group, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteel park Arenberg 10, 3001, Leuven - Heverlee, Belgium

    Helena Handschuh (Dr.)

Authors
  1. Helena Handschuh
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Henk C. A. van Tilborg

  2. Center for Secure Information Systems, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 22030-4422, USA

    Sushil Jajodia

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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Handschuh, H. (2011). RC6. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A., Jajodia, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5906-5_608

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