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Abstract
RC5 is a block cipher that has several salient features such as adaptability to process different word lengths with a variable block size, a variable number of rounds and a variable‐length secret key. However, RC5 can be broken with various attacks such as correlation attack, timing attack, known plaintext correlation attack and differential attacks, revealing weak security. We aimed to enhance the RC5 block cipher to be more secure and efficient for real‐time applications while preserving its advantages. For this purpose, this article introduces a new approach based on strengthening both the confusion and diffusion operations by combining chaos and cryptographic primitive operations to produce round keys with better pseudo‐random sequences. Comparative security analysis and performance evaluation of the enhanced RC5 block cipher (ERC5) with RC5, RC6 and chaotic block cipher algorithm (CBCA) are addressed. Several test images are used for inspecting the validity of the encryption and decryption algorithms. The experimental results show the superiority of the suggested enhanced RC5 (ERC5) block cipher to image encryption algorithms such as RC5, RC6 and CBCA from the security analysis and performance evaluation points of view.