Vectorial Boolean Functions

Introduction

Let <math>\mathbb{F}_2^n</math> be the vector space of dimension <math>n</math> over the finite field <math>\mathbb{F}_2</math> with two elements. Functions from <math>\mathbb{F}_2^m</math> to <math>\mathbb{F}_2^n</math> are called <math>(m,n)</math>-functions or simply vectorial Boolean functions when the dimensions of the vector spaces are implicit or irrelevant.

Any <math>(m,n)</math>-function <math>F</math> can be written as a vector <math>F = (f_1, f_2, \ldots f_m)</math> of <math>n</math>-dimensional Boolean functions <math>f_1, f_2, \ldots f_m</math> which are called the coordinate functions of <math>F</math>.

Cryptanalytic attacks

Vectorial Boolean functions, also referred to as "S-boxes", or "Substitution boxes", in the context of cryptography, are a fundamental building block of block ciphers and are crucial to their security: more precisely, the resistance of the block cipher to cryptanalytic attacks directly depends on the properties of the S-boxes used in its construction.

The main types of cryptanalytic attacks that result in the definition of design criteria for S-boxes are the following:

• the differential attack introduced by Biham and Shamir; to resist it, an S-box must have low differential uniformity;
• the linear attack introduced by Matsui; to resist it, an S-box must have high nonlinearity;
• the higher order differential attack; to resist it, an S-box must have high algebraic degree;
• the interpolation attack; to resist it, the univariate representation of an S-box must have high degree, and its distance to the set of low univariate degree functions must be large;
• algebraic attacks.