A Description of the RC2(r) Encryption Algorithm
RFC 2268
| Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(March 1998; Errata)
Was draft-rivest-rc2desc (individual)
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|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
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Network Working Group R. Rivest
Request for Comments: 2268 MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Category: Informational and RSA Data Security, Inc.
March 1998
A Description of the RC2(r) Encryption Algorithm
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.
1. Introduction
This memo is an RSA Laboratories Technical Note. It is meant for
informational use by the Internet community.
This memo describes a conventional (secret-key) block encryption
algorithm, called RC2, which may be considered as a proposal for a
DES replacement. The input and output block sizes are 64 bits each.
The key size is variable, from one byte up to 128 bytes, although the
current implementation uses eight bytes.
The algorithm is designed to be easy to implement on 16-bit
microprocessors. On an IBM AT, the encryption runs about twice as
fast as DES (assuming that key expansion has been done).
1.1 Algorithm description
We use the term "word" to denote a 16-bit quantity. The symbol + will
denote twos-complement addition. The symbol & will denote the bitwise
"and" operation. The term XOR will denote the bitwise "exclusive-or"
operation. The symbol ~ will denote bitwise complement. The symbol ^
will denote the exponentiation operation. The term MOD will denote
the modulo operation.
There are three separate algorithms involved:
Key expansion. This takes a (variable-length) input key and
produces an expanded key consisting of 64 words K[0],...,K[63].
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RFC 2268 RC2(r) Encryption Algorithm March 1998
Encryption. This takes a 64-bit input quantity stored in words
R[0], ..., R[3] and encrypts it "in place" (the result is left in
R[0], ..., R[3]).
Decryption. The inverse operation to encryption.
2. Key expansion
Since we will be dealing with eight-bit byte operations as well as
16-bit word operations, we will use two alternative notations
for referring to the key buffer:
For word operations, we will refer to the positions of the
buffer as K[0], ..., K[63]; each K[i] is a 16-bit word.
For byte operations, we will refer to the key buffer as
L[0], ..., L[127]; each L[i] is an eight-bit byte.
These are alternative views of the same data buffer. At all times it
will be true that
K[i] = L[2*i] + 256*L[2*i+1].
(Note that the low-order byte of each K word is given before the
high-order byte.)
We will assume that exactly T bytes of key are supplied, for some T
in the range 1 <= T <= 128. (Our current implementation uses T = 8.)
However, regardless of T, the algorithm has a maximum effective key
length in bits, denoted T1. That is, the search space is 2^(8*T), or
2^T1, whichever is smaller.
The purpose of the key-expansion algorithm is to modify the key
buffer so that each bit of the expanded key depends in a complicated
way on every bit of the supplied input key.
The key expansion algorithm begins by placing the supplied T-byte key
into bytes L[0], ..., L[T-1] of the key buffer.
The key expansion algorithm then computes the effective key length in
bytes T8 and a mask TM based on the effective key length in bits T1.
It uses the following operations:
T8 = (T1+7)/8;
TM = 255 MOD 2^(8 + T1 - 8*T8);
Thus TM has its 8 - (8*T8 - T1) least significant bits set.
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RFC 2268 RC2(r) Encryption Algorithm March 1998
For example, with an effective key length of 64 bits, T1 = 64, T8 = 8
and TM = 0xff. With an effective key length of 63 bits, T1 = 63, T8
= 8 and TM = 0x7f.
Here PITABLE[0], ..., PITABLE[255] is an array of "random" bytes
based on the digits of PI = 3.14159... . More precisely, the array
PITABLE is a random permutation of the values 0, ..., 255. Here is
the PITABLE in hexadecimal notation:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f
00: d9 78 f9 c4 19 dd b5 ed 28 e9 fd 79 4a a0 d8 9d
10: c6 7e 37 83 2b 76 53 8e 62 4c 64 88 44 8b fb a2
20: 17 9a 59 f5 87 b3 4f 13 61 45 6d 8d 09 81 7d 32
30: bd 8f 40 eb 86 b7 7b 0b f0 95 21 22 5c 6b 4e 82
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