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Vectorial Boolean functions and codes are closely related and interconnected. On the one hand, various requirements of binary linear codes are needed for their theoretical interests but, more importantly, for their practical applications (such as few-weight codes or minimal codes for secret sharing, locally recoverable codes for storage, etc.). On the other hand, various criteria and tables have been introduced to analyse the security of S-boxes that are related to vectorial Boolean functions, such as the Differential Distribution Table (DDT), the Boomerang Connectivity Table (BCT), and the Differential-Linear Connectivity Table (DLCT). In previous years, two new tables have been proposed for which the literature was pretty abundant: the c-DDT to extend the DDT and the c-BCT to extend the BCT. In the same vein, we propose extended concepts to study further the security of vectorial Boolean functions, especially the c-Walsh transform, the c-autocorrelation, and the c-differential-linear uniformity and its accompanying table, the c-Differential-Linear Connectivity Table (c-DLCT). We study the properties of these novel functions at their optimal level concerning these concepts and describe the c-DLCT of the crucial inverse vectorial (Boolean) function case. Finally, we draw new ideas for future research toward linear code designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boosted by cryptography and coding theory applications and rich connections to objects from geometry and combinatorics, bent functions and related functions developed into a lively research area. In the mid-seventies, Rothaus initially introduced bent functions in the Boolean case, but later, they extended in the p-ary case where p is any prime. Such an extension brought more rich connections to bent functions. In addition to the theory of Fourier transform, handling p-ary bent functions (where p is an odd prime), analyzing their properties and designing them require using the theory of cyclotomic fields. Such a family is classified into weakly regular bent and regular bent. Compared to the Boolean case, the class of p-ary bent functions inherits a much larger variety of properties. For example, it contains the class of dual-bent functions as a proper subclass, which again includes weakly regular bent functions as a proper subclass. Weakly regular bent functions can also be employed in many domains. In particular, they have been widely used in designing good linear codes for several applications (such as secret sharing and two-party computation), association schemes, and strongly regular graphs. More exploration is still needed despite a lot of interest and attention in this topic to increase our knowledge of bent functions and design them. In particular, only a few constructions of weakly regular bent functions have been presented in the literature. Nice construction methods of these functions have been given by Tang et al (IEEE Trans Inf Theory 62(3):1166–1176, 2016). All the known infinite families of weakly regular bent functions belong to a class (denoted by Tang et al. in the previous reference) R F . This paper is devoted to weakly regular bent functions, and its objective is twofold. First, it aims to generate new infinite families of weakly regular bent functions living outside R F and secondly, to exploit the constructed functions to design new families of p-ary linear codes and investigate their use for some standard application after studying this minimality based on their weight distributions. More specifically, we present several classes of weakly regular bent functions obtained from monomial bent functions by modifying the values of some known weakly regular bent functions on some subsets of the finite field F p n (n is a positive integer). Our weakly regular bent functions are of degree either p or p + 1 2 . We also explicitly determine their corresponding dual functions. Finally, we exploit our constructions to derive four new classes of linear codes with three to seven weights. We also show that two of them lead to minimal codes, which are more appropriate for several concrete applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we are interested in the characterization of the hyper-bentness property of all functions defined over the Galois field $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $ in polynomial forms as sums of multiple trace terms obtained via Dillon-like exponents with coefficients in the extension Galois field $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $. Characterizations of hyper-bentness were provided firstly by Charpin and Gong fourteen years ago for functions defined over $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $, with coefficients in $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{m}} $, in terms of some exponential sums over $ \mathbb{F}_{2^m}{} $ involving Dickson polynomials. Mesnager extended their results in 2011 by considering adding a trace monomial function defined over specific fields of small cardinalities.By employing the Möbius transformation, we succeed in characterizing the hyper-bentness property of functions with Dillon-like exponents with coefficients in the whole $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $. We emphasize that this ascension offers more choices on the coefficients (and therefore in exhibiting possible new hyper-bent functions) by keeping the evaluations of the related exponential sums in the $ \mathbb{F}_{2^m}{} $ as well as the computation of the number of rational points on the associate hyperelliptic curves on the same field in the spirit of previous achievements due to Lisoněk (2011) and Flori and Mesnager (2012-2013) in this context. This strategy gives a generalization of the result due to Charpin and Gong, and its effectiveness can be seen from a new infinite family of binomial hyper-bent functions. Their coefficients are in an extension field. Nevertheless, as all the previously found functions, they still lie in the well-known class denoted by $ \mathcal{PS}_{ap}^{\#} $, initially studied in 2006 by Carlet and Gaborit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-dimensional (2-D) Z-complementary array pair (ZCAP) is a pair of 2-D arrays, whose 2-D autocorrelation sum gives zero value at all time shifts in a zone around the (0, 0) time shift, except the (0, 0) time shift. The zone is called a zero correlation zone (ZCZ). 2-D ZCAPs include 2-D Golay complementary array pairs (GCAPs) as special cases, and can be applicable in 2-D synchronization. In this paper, we focus on designing new 2-D ZCAPs by exploring two promising approaches. The first construction of 2-D ZCAPs uses 1-D ZCPs as the initial stage, such that any binary ZCP and q-phase ZCP can produce a q-phase 2-D ZCAP. The second construction of 2-D ZCAPs is based on 2-D generalized Boolean functions (GBFs), and the resulting 2-D ZCAPs can have the largest 2-D ZCZ ratio 6/7, compared with known 2-D ZCAPs but not 2-D GCAPs in the literature. Here the ZCZ ratio is defined as the ratio of the ZCZ size over the array size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reed-Muller codes are error-correcting codes used in many areas related to coding theory, such as electrical engineering and computer science. The binary $r^{th}$ -order Reed-Muller code $RM(r,n)$ can be viewed as the set of all $n$ -variable Boolean functions of algebraic degree at most $r$. Despite the intense work on these codes, many problems are known to be hard (notably, determining their covering radius) and remain open to this day. Fourteen years ago, Carlet and Mesnager improved in [IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, “Improving the Upper Bounds on the Covering Radii of Binary Reed-Muller Codes”, 53(1), 2007] the upper bound on the covering radius of the Reed-Muller code of order 2, and they deduced improved upper bounds on the covering radii of the Reed-Muller codes of higher orders. Until 2021, these upper bounds remained the best ones in the literature. The Reed-Muller code $RM(n-3,n)$ , which corresponds to the dual of the Reed-Muller code $RM(2,n)$ , has attracted much attention. One of the main reasons is that it is precisely the code that has been considered to get the upper bounds derived by Carlet and Mesnager. Those upper bounds have been obtained thanks to the characterization of the codewords of the Reed-Muller code, whose Hamming weights are strictly less than 2.5 times the minimum distance $2^{n-r}$ due to Kasami, Tokura, and Azumi. Despite their impressive work in the seventieth, a more refined study and profound description of those codewords of ${RM}({n-3},{n})$ whose Hamming weight equals 16, and especially 18, seem necessary, as it could help us significantly in improving the covering radius of Reed-Muller codes. In this paper, we push further the known results on the Reed-Muller codes by focusing on the Reed-Muller code ${RM}({n-3},{n})$. We provide a classification of the codewords of weights 16 and 18 of the Reed-Muller code $RM(n-3,n)$. Our algebraic descriptions allow us to count the number of such codewords and to enumerate all of them explicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of correlation immune functions has been introduced by Siegenthaler (1984) in symmetric cryptography in the framework of stream ciphers. At the conference CRYPTO’91 by Camion et al., it has been pointed out that this notion existed in statistics and combinatorics. It has recently been highlighted that such functions also play an important role in a new framework related to side-channel attack counter-measures. Since then, the interest in correlation immune Boolean functions has been renewed, and new challenges regarding these functions have appeared. Specifically, low Hamming weight correlation immune functions have been selected as useful for counter-measures to side-channel attacks. Despite their importance, the literature is not abundant in this research direction. Two very interesting articles in which such correlation immune functions were nicely explored, given this novel use of them. Carlet initiated the first one in 2013, and the second one is due to Carlet and Chen (2018). This paper deals with correlation immune Boolean functions aiming to produce more candidates of those processing low Hamming weights. We shall focus on correlation immune Boolean functions with Hamming weights power of 2 (which offer a flexibility to control the correlation immunity aspects) and present several methods of designing them. Some design methods are efficient and could be employed to derive such functions. Consequently, given two positive integers $n$ and $m$ , we derive new effective constructions of correlation immune Boolean functions with Hamming weight power of 2. Furthermore, an upper bound on the correlation immunity of the newly constructed $n$ -variable Boolean functions with Hamming weight $2^{m}$ was determined for $n-m\ge 0$. Besides, exact values and lower bounds on the maximum correlation immunity of those functions are explored and discussed, mainly when the values of $n$ and $m$ are very close. This paper also exhibits explicit examples of those correlation immune functions that illustrate our methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a prior paper (Ellingsen et al., 2020), two of us, along with P. Ellingsen, P. Felke, and A. Tkachenko, defined a new (output) multiplicative differential and the corresponding $c$ -differential uniformity, which has the potential of extending differential cryptanalysis. Here, we continue the work by looking at some APN functions through the mentioned concept and showing that their $c$ -differential uniformity increases significantly in some cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity are important cryptographic primitives in some stream ciphers. In this paper, two methodologies for constructing minimal binary codes from sets, Boolean functions and vectorial Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity, are proposed. More precisely, a general construction of new minimal codes using minimal codes contained in Reed-Muller codes and sets without nonzero low degree annihilators is presented. The other construction allows us to yield minimal codes from certain subcodes of Reed-Muller codes and vectorial Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity. Via these general constructions, infinite families of minimal binary linear codes of dimension $m$ and length less than or equal to $m(m+1)/2$ are obtained. Besides, a lower bound on the minimum distance of the proposed minimal linear codes is established. Conjectures and open problems are also presented. The results of this paper show that Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity have nice applications in several fields additionally to symmetric cryptography, such as coding theory and secret sharing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the resistance against algebraic attacks and fast algebraic attacks are considered as an important cryptographic property for Boolean functions used in stream ciphers. Both attacks are very powerful analysis concepts and can be applied to symmetric cryptographic algorithms used in stream ciphers. The notion of algebraic immunity has received wide attention since it is a powerful tool to measure the resistance of a Boolean function to standard algebraic attacks. Nevertheless, an algebraic tool to handle the resistance to fast algebraic attacks is not clearly identified in the literature. In the current paper, we propose a new parameter to measure a Boolean function’s resistance to fast algebraic attack. We also introduce the notion of fast immunity profile and show that it informs both on the resistance to standard and fast algebraic attacks. Further, we evaluate our parameter for two secondary constructions of Boolean functions. Moreover, A coding-theory approach to the characterization of perfect algebraic immune functions is presented. Via this characterization, infinite families of binary linear complementary dual codes (or LCD codes for short) are obtained from perfect algebraic immune functions. Some of the binary LCD codes presented in this paper are optimal. These binary LCD codes have applications in armoring implementations against so-called side-channel attacks (SCA) and fault non-invasive attacks, in addition to their applications in communication and data storage systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let m be an even positive integer. A Boolean bent function ƒ on F2m-1 × F2 is called a cyclic bent function if for any a ≠ b ∈ F2m-1 and ε ∈ F2, ƒ(ax1, x2)+ ƒ(bx1, x2 + ε) is always bent, where x1 ∈ F2m-1, x2 ∈ F2. Cyclic bent functions look extremely rare. This paper focuses on cyclic bent functions on F2m-1 × F2 and their applications. The first objective of this paper is to establish a link between quadratic cyclic bent functions and a special type of prequasifields, and construct a class of quadratic cyclic bent functions from the Kantor-Williams prequasifields. The second objective is to use cyclic bent functions to construct families of optimal sequences. The results of this paper show that cyclic bent functions have nice applications in several fields such as coding theory, symmetric cryptography, and CDMA communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rotation symmetric Boolean functions incorporate a super-class of symmetric functions which represent an attractive corpus for computer investigation. These functions have been investigated from the viewpoints of bentness and correlation immunity and have also played a role in the study of nonlinearity. In the literature, many constructions of balanced odd-variable rotation symmetric Boolean functions with optimal algebraic immunity have been derived. While it seems that the construction of balanced even-variable rotation symmetric Boolean functions with optimal algebraic immunity is very hard work to breakthrough. In this paper, we present for the first time a construction of balanced rotation symmetric Boolean functions on an arbitrary even number of variables with optimal algebraic immunity by modifying the support of the majority function. The nonlinearity of the newly constructed rotation symmetric Boolean functions is also derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At Eurocrypt'18, Cid, Huang, Peyrin, Sasaki, and Song introduced a new tool called Boomerang Connectivity Table (BCT) for measuring the resistance of a block cipher against the boomerang attack which is an important cryptanalysis technique introduced by Wagner in 1999 against block ciphers. Next, Boura and Canteaut introduced an important parameter related to the BCT for cryptographic S-boxes called boomerang uniformity. The purpose of this paper is to present a brief state-of-the-art on the notion of boomerang uniformity of vectorial Boolean functions (or S-boxes) and provide new results. More specifically, we present a slightly different but more convenient formulation of the boomerang uniformity and prove some new identities. Moreover, we focus on quadratic permutations in even dimension and obtain general criteria by which they have optimal BCT. As a consequence of the new criteria, two previously known results can be derived, and many new quadratic permutations with optimal BCT (optimal means that the maximal value in the Boomerang Connectivity Table equals the lowest known differential uniformity) can be found. In particular, we show that the boomerang uniformity of the binomial differentially 4-uniform permutations presented by Bracken, Tan, and Tan equals 4. Furthermore, we show a link between the boomerang uniformity and the nonlinearity for some special quadratic permutations. Finally, we present a characterization of quadratic permutations with boomerang uniformity 4. With this characterization, we show that the boomerang uniformity of a quadratic permutation with boomerang uniformity 4 is preserved by the extended affine (EA) equivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimal linear codes have interesting applications in secret sharing schemes and secure two-party computation. This paper uses characteristic functions of some subsets of $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ to construct minimal linear codes. By properties of characteristic functions, we can obtain more minimal binary linear codes from known minimal binary linear codes, which generalizes results of Ding et al. [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 64, no. 10, pp. 6536–6545, 2018]. By characteristic functions corresponding to some subspaces of $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ , we obtain many minimal linear codes, which generalizes results of [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 64, no. 10, pp. 6536–6545, 2018] and [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 65, no. 11, pp. 7067–7078, 2019]. Finally, we use characteristic functions to present a characterization of minimal linear codes from the defining set method and present a class of minimal linear codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determine the number of the rational zeros of any given linearized polynomial is one of the vital problems in finite field theory, with applications in modern symmetric cryptosystems. But, the known general theory for this task is much far from giving the exact number when applied to a specific linearized polynomial. The first contribution of this paper is a better general method to get a more precise upper bound on the number of rational zeros of any given linearized polynomial over arbitrary finite field. We anticipate this method would be applied as a useful tool in many research branches of finite field and cryptography. Really we apply this result to get tighter estimations of the lower bounds on the second-order nonlinearities of general cubic Boolean functions, which has been an active research problem during the past decade. Furthermore, this paper shows that by studying the distribution of radicals of derivatives of a given Boolean function one can get a better lower bound of the second-order nonlinearity, through an example of the monomial Boolean functions g μ = T r (μ x 2 2 r + 2 r + 1) defined over the finite field F 2 n . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-to-one (2-to-1) mappings over finite fields play an important role in symmetric cryptography. In particular they allow to design APN functions, bent functions and semi-bent functions. In this paper we provide a systematic study of two-to-one mappings that are defined over finite fields. We characterize such mappings by means of the Walsh transforms. We also present several constructions, including an AGW-like criterion, constructions with the form of $x^{r}h(x^{(q-1)/d})$ , those from permutation polynomials, from linear translators and from APN functions. Then we present 2-to-1 polynomial mappings in classical classes of polynomials: linearized polynomials and monomials, low degree polynomials, Dickson polynomials and Muller-Cohen-Matthews polynomials, etc. Lastly, we show applications of 2-to-1 mappings over finite fields for constructions of bent Boolean and vectorial bent functions, semi-bent functions, planar functions and permutation polynomials. In all those respects, we shall review what is known and provide several new results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, Pott et al. have studied in (IEEE Trans Inf Theory 64(1):403-411, 2018) the maximum number of bent components of vectorial functions. They have presented many nice results and suggested several open problems in this context. This paper is in the continuation of their study in which we solve two open problems raised by Pott et al. and partially solve an open problem raised by the same authors. Firstly, we prove that for a vectorial function, the property of having the maximum number of bent components is invariant under the so-called CCZ equivalence. Secondly, we prove the non-existence of APN plateaued functions having the maximum number of bent components. In particular, quadratic APN functions cannot have the maximum number of bent components. Finally, we present some sufficient conditions that the vectorial function defined from F 2 2 k to F 2 2 k by its univariate representation: α x 2 i x + x 2 k + ∑ j = 1 ρ γ (j) x 2 t j + ∑ j = 1 ρ γ (j) x 2 t j + k has the maximum number of bent components, where ρ ≤ k . Further, we show that the differential spectrum of the function x 2 i (x + x 2 k + x 2 t 1 + x 2 t 1 + k + x 2 t 2 + x 2 t 2 + k ) (where i , t 1 , t 2 satisfy some conditions) is different from the binomial function F i (x) = x 2 i (x + x 2 k) presented in the article of Pott et al. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plateaued and bent functions play a significant role in cryptography, sequence theory, coding theory and combinatorics. In 1997, Coulter and Matthews redefined bent functions over any finite field F q where q is a prime power, and established their properties. The objective of this work is to redefine the notion of plateaued functions over F q , and to present several explicit characterizations of those functions. We first give, over F q , the notion of q -ary plateaued functions, which relies on the concept of the Walsh–Hadamard transform in terms of canonical additive character of F q. We then give a concrete example of q -ary plateaued function, that is not vectorial p -ary plateaued function. This suggests that the study of plateaued-ness is also significant for q -ary functions over F q. We finally characterize q -ary plateaued functions in terms of derivatives, Walsh power moments and autocorrelation functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boolean functions satisfying good cryptographic criteria when restricted to the set of vectors with constant Hamming weight play an important role in the recent FLIP stream cipher (Méaux et al.: in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9665, pp. 311–343, Springer, Berlin, 2016). In this paper, we propose a large class of weightwise perfectly balanced (WPB) functions, which is 2-rotation symmetric. This new class of WPB functions is not extended affinely equivalent to the known constructions. We also discuss the weightwise nonlinearity profile of these functions, and present general lower bounds on k-weightwise nonlinearity, where k is a power of 2. Moreover, we exhibit a subclass of the family. By a recursive lower bound, we show that these subclass of WPB functions have very high weightwise nonlinearity profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very recently, Carlet, Méaux and Rotella have studied the main cryptographic features of Boolean functions when, for a given number n of variables, the input to these functions is restricted to some subset E of F2n. Their study includes the particular case when E equals the set of vectors of fixed Hamming weight, which is important in the robustness of the Boolean function involved in the FLIP stream cipher. In this paper we focus on the nonlinearity of Boolean functions with restricted input and present new results related to the analysis of this nonlinearity improving the upper bound given by Carlet et al. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to increase our knowledge on generalized bent functions (including generalized bent Boolean functions and generalized $p$ -ary bent functions with odd prime $p$ ) by bringing new results on their characterization and construction in arbitrary characteristic. More specifically, we first investigate relations between generalized bent functions and bent functions by the decomposition of generalized bent functions. This enables us to completely characterize generalized bent functions and $\mathbb Z_{p^{k}}$ -bent functions by some affine space associated with the generalized bent functions. We also present the relationship between generalized bent Boolean functions with an odd number of variables and generalized bent Boolean functions with an even number of variables. Based on the well-known Maiorana-McFarland class of Boolean functions, we present some infinite classes of generalized bent Boolean functions. In addition, we introduce a class of generalized hyperbent functions that can be seen as generalized Dillon’s $PS$ functions. Finally, we solve an open problem related to the description of the dual function of a weakly regular generalized bent Boolean function with an odd number of variables via the Walsh–Hadamard transform of their component functions, and we generalize these results to the case of odd prime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is composed of two main parts related to the nonlinearity of vectorial functions. The first part is devoted to maximally nonlinear (n,m) functions (the so-called bent vectorial functions), which contribute to an optimal resistance to both linear and differential attacks on symmetric cryptosystems. They can be used in block ciphers at the cost of additional diffusion/compression/expansion layers, or as building blocks for the construction of substitution boxes (S-boxes), and they are also useful for constructing robust codes and algebraic manipulation detection codes. A main issue on bent vectorial functions is to characterize bent monomial functions Tr_{m}^{n} (\lambda x^{d}) from \mathbb {F}_{2^{n}} to \mathbb F2^{m} (where m is a divisor of n ) leading to a classification of those bent monomials. We also treat the case of functions with multiple trace terms involving general results and explicit constructions. Furthermore, we investigate some open problems raised by Pasalic et al. and Muratović-Ribić et al. in a series of papers on vectorial functions. The second part is devoted to the nonlinearity of (n,m) -functions. No tight upper bound is known when \frac n2

In this paper, we introduce generalized hyperbent functions from \mathbb F2^{n} to \mathbb Z2^{k} , and investigate decompositions of generalized (hyper)bent functions. We show that generalized (hyper)bent functions f from \mathbb F2^{n} to \mathbb Z2^{k} consist of components which are generalized (hyper)bent functions from \mathbb F2^{n} to {\mathbb Z}_{2^{k^\prime }}$ for some $k^\prime < k$ . For even $n$ , most notably we show that the g-hyperbentness of $f$ is equivalent to the hyperbentness of the components of $f$ with some conditions on the Walsh–Hadamard coefficients. For odd $n$ , we show that the Boolean functions associated to a generalized bent function form an affine space of semibent functions. This complements a recent result for even $n$ , where the associated Boolean functions are bent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plateaued functions are very important crypto- graphic functions due to their various desirable cryptographic characteristics. We point out that plateaued functions are more general than bent functions (that is, functions with maximum nonlinearity). Some Boolean plateaued functions have large nonlinearity, which provides protection against fast correlation attacks when they are used as combiners or filters in stream ciphers, and contributes, when they are the component functions of the substitution boxes in block ciphers, to protection against linear cryptanalysis. P-ary plateaued functions have attracted recently some attention in the literature, and many activities on generalized $p$ -ary functions have been carried out. This paper increases our knowledge on plateaued functions in the general context of generalized p$ -ary functions. We first introduce two new versions of plateaued functions, which we shall call generalized plateaued functions and admissible plateaued functions. The generalized plateaued functions extend the standard notion of plateaued p$ -ary functions to those whose outputs are in the ring . Next, we study the generalized plateaued functions and use admissible plateaued functions to characterize the generalized plateaued functions by means of their components. Finally, we provide for the first time two constructions of generalized plateaued functions. In particular, we generalize a known secondary construction of binary generalized bent functions and derive constructions of binary generalized plateaued functions with different amplitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 1970, Boolean functions have been the focus of a lot of attention in cryptography. An important topic in symmetric ciphers concerns the cryptographic properties of Boolean functions and constructions of Boolean functions with good cryptographic properties, that is, good resistance to known attacks. An important progress in cryptanalysis areas made in 2003 was the introduction by Courtois and Meier of algebraic attacks and fast algebraic at- tacks which are very powerful analysis concepts and can be applied to almost all cryptographic algorithms. To study the resistance against algebraic attacks, the notion of algebraic immunity has been introduced. In this paper, we use a parameter introduced by Liu and al., called fast algebraic immunity, as a tool to measure the resistance of a cryptosystem (involving Boolean functions) to fast algebraic attacks. We prove an upper bound on the fast algebraic im- munity. Using our upper bound, we establish the weakness of trace inverse functions against fast algebraic attacks confirming a recent result of Feng and Gong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we firstly compute the dual functions of elementary symmetric bent functions. Next, we derive a new secondary construction of bent functions (given with their dual functions) involving symmetric bent functions, leading to a generalization of the well-know Rothaus' construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents methods for designing functions having many applications in particular to construct linear codes with few weights. The former codes have several applications in secret sharing, authentication codes, association schemes and strongly regular graphs. We firstly provide new secondary constructions of bent functions generalizing the well-known Rothaus' constructions as well as their dual functions. From our generalization, we show that we are able to compute the dual function of a bent function built from Rothaus' construction. Next we present a result leading to a new method for constructing semi-bent functions and few Walsh transform values functions built from bent functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carlet provides two bounds on the second-order nonlinearity of Boolean functions. We construct a family of Boolean functions where the first bound (the presumed weaker bound) is tight and the second bound is strictly worse than the first bound. We show that the difference between the two bounds can be made arbitrarily large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bent functions are maximally nonlinear Boolean functions with an even number of variables. They have attracted a lot of research for four decades because of their own sake as interesting combinatorial objects, and also because of their relations to coding theory, sequences and their applications in cryptography and other domains such as design theory. In this paper we investigate explicit constructions of bent functions which are linear on elements of spreads. After presenting an overview on this topic, we study bent functions which are linear on elements of presemifield spreads and give explicit descriptions of such functions for known commutative presemifields. A direct connection between bent functions which are linear on elements of the Desarguesian spread and oval polynomials over finite fields was proved by Carlet and the second author. Very recently, further nice extensions have been made by Carlet in another context. We introduce oval polynomials for semifields which are dual to symplectic semifields. In particular, it is shown that from a linear oval polynomial for a semifield one can get an oval polynomial for transposed semifield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correlation immune functions were introduced to protect some shift register based stream ciphers against correlation attacks. For crypto- graphic applications, relaxing the concept of correlation immunity has been highlighted and proved to be more appropriate in several cryptographic situ- ations. Various weakened notions of correlation immunity and resiliency have been widely introduced for cryptographic functions, but those notions are dif- ficult to handle. As a variation, we focus on the notion of φ-correlation immunity which is closely related to (fast) correlation attacks on stream ciphers based on nonlinear combiner model. In particular, we exhibit new connections between φ-correlation immunity and ϵ-almost resiliency, which are two distinct approaches for characterizing relaxed resiliency. We also extend the concept of φ-correlation immunity introduced by Carlet et al. in 2006 for Boolean functions to vectorial functions and study the main cryptographic parameters of φ-correlation immune functions. Moreover, we provide new primary constructions of φ-resilient functions with good designed immunity profile. Specially, we propose a new recursive method to construct φ-resilient functions with high nonlinearity, high algebraic degree, and monotone increasing immunity profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plateaued functions have been introduced by Zheng and Zhang in 1999 as good candidates for designing cryptographic functions since they pos- sess many desirable cryptographic characteristics. Plateaued functions bring together various nonlinear characteristics and include two important classes of Boolean functions defined in even dimension: the well-known bent functions (0-plateaued functions) and the semi-bent functions (2-plateaued functions). Bent functions have been extensively investigated since 1976. Very recently, the study of semi-bent functions has attracted a lot of attention in symmetric cryptography. Many intensive progresses in the design of such functions have been made especially in recent years. The paper is devoted to the construction of semi-bent functions on the finite field F2n (n = 2m) in the line of a recent work of S. Mesnager [IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol 57, No 11, 2011]. We extend Mesnager's results and present a new construction of infinite classes of binary semi-bent functions in polynomial trace. The exten- sion is achieved by inserting mappings h on F2n which can be expressed as h(0) = 0 and h(uy) = h1(u)h2(y) with u ranging over the circle U of unity of F2n, y ∈ F2m* and uy ∈ F2n, where h1 is a isomorphism on U and h2 is an arbitrary mapping on F2m. We then characterize the semi-bentness property of the extended family in terms of classical binary exponential sums and binary polynomials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An involution is a permutation, such that its inverse is itself (i.e., cycle length ≤ 2). Due to this property, involutions have been used in many applications, including cryptography and coding theory. In this paper, we provide a systematic study of involutions that are defined over a finite field of characteristic 2. We characterize the involution property of several classes of polynomials and propose several constructions. Furthermore, we study the number of fixed points of involutions, which is a pertinent question related to permutations with short cycle. In this paper, we mostly have used combinatorial techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Boolean function with an even number of variables is called bent if it is maximally nonlinear. This paper extends the recent work of the author on bent functions ('Several new infinite families of bent functions and their duals', IEEE-IT, 60(7), pp. 4397-4407, 2014). We exhibit several new infinite families of bent functions with their dual (bent) functions. Some of them are obtained via new infinite families of permutations that we provide with their compositional inverses. We introduce secondary-like constructions of permutations leading to the construction of several families of bent functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this survey, we revisit the Rothaus paper and the chapter of Dillon's thesis dedicated to bent functions, and we describe the main results obtained on these functions during these last 40 years. We also cover more briefly super-classes of Boolean functions, vectorial bent functions and bent functions in odd characteristic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bent functions are optimal combinatorial objects. Since their introduction, substantial efforts have been directed toward their study in the last three decades. A complete classification of bent functions is elusive and looks hopeless today, therefore, not only their characterization, but also their generation are challenging problems. This paper is devoted to the construction of bent functions. First, we provide several new effective constructions of bent functions, self-dual bent functions, and antiself-dual bent functions. Second, we provide seven new infinite families of bent functions by explicitly calculating their dual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between exponential sums and algebraic varieties has been known for at least six decades. Recently, Lisoněk exploited it to reformulate the Charpin-Gong characterization of a large class of hyper-bent functions in terms of numbers of points on hyperelliptic curves. As a consequence, he obtained a polynomial time and space algorithm for certain subclasses of functions in the Charpin-Gong family. In this paper, we settle a more general framework, together with detailed proofs, for such an approach and show that it applies naturally to a distinct family of functions proposed by Mesnager. Doing so, a polynomial time and space test for the hyper-bentness of functions in this family is obtained as well. Nonetheless, a straightforward application of such results does not provide a satisfactory criterion for explicit generation of functions in the Mesnager family. To address this issue, we show how to obtain a more efficient test leading to a substantial practical gain. We finally elaborate on an open problem about hyperelliptic curves related to a family of Boolean functions studied by Charpin and Gong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of two main contributions. First, the Niho bent function consisting of 2^r exponents (discovered by Leander and Kholosha) is studied. The dual of the function is found and it is shown that this new bent function is not of the Niho type. Second, all known univariate representations of Niho bent functions are analyzed for their relation to the completed Maiorana–McFarland class \cal M. In particular, it is proven that two families do not belong to the completed class \cal M. The latter result gives a positive answer to an open problem whether the class H of bent functions introduced by Dillon in his thesis of 1974 differs from the completed class \cal M. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We show that any Boolean function, in even dimension, equal to the sum of a Boolean function g which is constant on each element of a spread and of a Boolean function h whose restrictions to these elements are all linear, is semibent if and only if g and h are both bent. We deduce a large number of infinite classes of semibent functions in explicit bivariate (respectively, univariate) polynomial form. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kloosterman sums have recently become the focus of much research, most notably due to their applications in cryptography and coding theory. In this paper, we extensively investigate the link between the semibentness property of functions in univariate forms obtained via Dillon and Niho functions and Kloosterman sums. In particular, we show that zeros and the value four of binary Kloosterman sums give rise to semibent functions in even dimension with maximum degree. Moreover, we study the semibentness property of functions in polynomial forms with multiple trace terms and exhibit criteria involving Dickson polynomials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correlation-immune (CI) multi-output Boolean functions have the property of keeping the same output distributions when some input variables are fixed. Recently, a new application of CI functions has appeared in the system of resisting side-channel attacks (SCA). In this paper, three new methods are proposed to characterize the t th-order CI multi-output (n -input and m -output) Boolean functions. The first characterization is to regard the multi-output Boolean functions as the corresponding generalized Boolean functions. It is shown that a generalized Boolean function f g is a t th-order CI function if and only if the Walsh transform of f g defined here vanishes at all points with Hamming weights between 1 and t. The last two methods are generalized from Fourier spectral characterizations. Especially, Fourier spectral characterizations are efficient to characterize the symmetric multi-output CI Boolean functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first derive a necessary and sufficient condition for a bent Boolean function by analyzing their support set. Next, using this condition and the Pless power moment identities, we propose a construction method of bent functions of 2 k variables by a suitable choice of 2 k -dimension subspace of F 2 2 2 k − 1 − 2 k − 1 . Further, we extend our results to the so-called hyper-bent functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]