New concept for determining the orders of SAC and PC.

The autocorrelation of a Boolean function possesses the capability to reflect such characteristics as linear structure, Strict Avalanche Criterion(SAC) and Propagation Criterion(PC) of degree k. But it can do nothing in determining the order of SAC or PC. A calculating table for the autocorrelation is constructed in this paper so as to show what is beyond the autocorrelation and how the three cryptographic characteristics are exhibited. A deeper study on the calculating table in a similar way has helped us to develop a new concept, named as the general autocorrelation, to address efficiently the problem how to determine the orders of SAC and PC. The application on the Advanced Encryption Standard(AES) shows the SAC and PC characteristics of Boolean functions of AES S-box. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]