9-round attack on AES-256 by a 6-round property

In this paper, we propose a new 6-round Related-Key Impossible Differential property of AES-256 and two related-key impossible differential attacks on 7 and 9 round AES-256, based on the proposed property. The overall complexity of the proposed 7 round attack is decreased by the factor 2¹⁷ . This is for the first time that a Related-Key Impossible Differential attack on 9-round AES-256 is successful. Also this is the first related-key attack on 9-round AES-256 that needs only 2 keys. Although the data and time complexities of the attack are approximately code book and exhaustive search, but we think the proposed property will be useful in future research like boomerang and rectangle attacks.