International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) Vol. 13, No. 1, February 2023, pp. 709~717 ISSN: 2088-8708, DOI: 10.11591/ijece.v13i1.pp709-717  709 Journal homepage: http://ijece.iaescore.com Bit-based cube rotation for text encryption Rihartanto 1 , Didi Susilo Budi Utomo 1 , Herny Februariyanti 2 , Arief Susanto 3 , Wardatul Khafidhah 1 1 Department of Information Technology, State Polytechnic of Samarinda, Samarinda, Indonesia 2 Department of Information System, Stikubank University, Semarang, Indonesia 3 Faculty of Engineering, Muria Kudus University, Kudus, Indonesia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Nov 27, 2021 Revised Jul 14, 2022 Accepted Aug 22, 2022 Today's rapid technological developments make information increasingly important. Not just its content, but the channels or media used for information distribution also need to be secured. Information security is an important aspect that requires serious attention. One of the most important parts of information security is implementation of encryption using certain methods or techniques. This study proposes bit-based cube rotation to secure a plaintext. The aim is to produce a ciphertext that satisfies the two properties of cryptography through diffusion to produce confusion. The result shows that in a normal sentence, there is a significant change in the ciphertext which has the highest avalanche effect value of 55.47% and a correlation coefficient of 0.115. This result proves that the bit-based cube rotation can produce a good ciphertext, where the encryption result is not influenced by its original text. Keywords: Bit-based cube rotation Encryption Diffusion Confusion Avalanche Effect This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Rihartanto Department of Information Technology, State Polytechnic of Samarinda Jl. Cipto Mangunkusumo, Gunung Panjang Campus, Samarinda 75131, Indonesia Email: rihart.c@gmail.com 1. INTRODUCTION Information is an important commodity for governments, private organizations, universities, non- governmental organizations (NGOs), or even individuals. Today’s rapid development in technologies make s information increasingly important. Not just its content, but the channels or media used for information distribution also need to be secured. The extensive use of the internet makes it easier for a person or certain parties to get whatever information he wants. This ease of access opens opportunities for abuse by irresponsible parties in carrying out illegal actions such as hacking sensitive or confidential data. Information security is an important aspect that requires serious attention. Encryption using certain methods or techniques is included to the efforts in securing information. Meanwhile, the type of information that can be secured is not only in the form of text but also images or other digital forms. Cryptography is an art or science that is used to secure or protect data and information [1], [2]. The purpose of securing information is to secure it from unauthorized users, in the context that only those who have appropriate permission can access the contents of the information. The cryptography process is divided into two parts, namely encryption and decryption process. Both processes usually require a keyword, where the keyword can be symmetrical or asymmetrical [3] depending on the cryptographic technique that is being used. According to information theorist Claude Shannon in his 1945 classified report “A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography”, there are two important properties in strong encryption algorithms [4]–[6], they are confusion and diffusion. Confusion is an encryption operation where the relationship between key and ciphertext is obscured. It hides the relationship between the ciphertext and the key. Thus increases the ambiguity of ciphertext and it is used by both block and stream ciphers. Diffusion is an encryption operation