 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (March 2009) |
 The Feistel function of the RC6 algorithm. | |
| General | |
|---|---|
| Designers | Ron Rivest, Matt Robshaw, Ray Sidney, Yiqun Lisa Yin |
| First published | 1998 |
| Derived from | RC5 |
| Certification | AES finalist |
| Cipher detail | |
| Key sizes | 128, 192, or 256 bits |
| Block sizes | 128 bits |
| Structure | Feistel network (Type 2)[1] |
| Rounds | 20 |
In cryptography, RC6 (Rivest cipher 6) is a symmetric key block cipher derived from RC5. It was designed by Ron Rivest, Matt Robshaw, Ray Sidney, and Yiqun Lisa Yin to meet the requirements of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) competition. The algorithm was one of the five finalists, and also was submitted to the NESSIE and CRYPTREC projects. It was a proprietary algorithm, patented by RSA Security.
RC6 proper has a block size of 128 bits and supports key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bits up to 2040-bits, but, like RC5, it may be parameterised to support a wide variety of word-lengths, key sizes, and number of rounds. RC6 is very similar to RC5 in structure, using data-dependent rotations, modular addition, and XOR operations; in fact, RC6 could be viewed as interweaving two parallel RC5 encryption processes, although RC6 does use an extra multiplication operation not present in RC5 in order to make the rotation dependent on every bit in a word, and not just the least significant few bits.
- ^ Hoang, Viet Tung; Rogaway, Phillip (2010). "On Generalized Feistel Networks". LNCS 6223. CRYPTO 2010. USA: Springer. pp. 613–630. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-14623-7_33.