The Strict Avalanche Criterion (SAC) is a property of vectorial Boolean functions that is used in the construction of strong S-boxes. We show in this paper how to generalize the concept of SAC to address possible c-differential attacks, in the realm of finite fields. We define the concepts of c-Strict Avalanche Criterion (c-SAC) and c-Strict Avalanche Criterion of order m (c-SAC(m)), and generalize results of (Li and Cusick, 2005). We also show computationally how the new definition is not equivalent to the existing concepts of c-bent1-ness (Stanica et al., 2020), nor (for n = m) PcN-ness (Ellingsen et al., 2020)

In a prior paper (Ellingsenet 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.

In this paper we define a new (output) multiplicative differential, and the corresponding c-differential uniformity. With this new concept, even for characteristic 2, there are perfect c-nonlinear (PcN) functions. We first characterize the c-differential uniformity of a function in terms of its Walsh transform. We further look at some of the known perfect nonlinear (PN) functions and show that only one remains a PcN function, under a different condition on the parameters. In fact, the p-ary Gold PN function increases its c-differential uniformity significantly, under some conditions on the parameters. We then precisely characterize the c-differential uniformity of the inverse function (in any dimension and characteristic), relevant for the Rijndael (and Advanced Encryption Standard) block cipher.

For a function $f$ from $\mathbb {F}_{2}^{n}$ to $\mathbb {F}_{2}^{n}$ , the planarity of $f$ is usually measured by its differential uniformity and differential spectrum. In this paper, we propose the concept of vanishing flats, which supplies a combinatorial viewpoint on the planarity. First, the number of vanishing flats of $f$ can be regarded as a measure of the distance between $f$ and the set of almost perfect nonlinear functions. In some cases, the number of vanishing flats serves as an “intermediate” concept between differential uniformity and differential spectrum, which contains more information than differential uniformity, however less than the differential spectrum. Secondly, the set of vanishing flats forms a combinatorial configuration called partial quadruple system, since it conveys a detailed structural information about $f$ . We initiate this study by considering the number of vanishing flats and the partial quadruple systems associated with monomials and Dembowski-Ostrom polynomials. In addition, we present an application of vanishing flats to the partition of a vector space into disjoint equidimensional affine spaces. We conclude the paper with several further questions and challenges.

We describe the application of edge-local complementation (ELC) to a Tanner graph associated with a binary linear code, C. Various properties of ELC are described, mainly the special case of isomorphic ELC operations and the relationship to the automorphism group of the code, Aut(C), and the generalization of ELC to weight-bounding ELC (WB-ELC) operations under which the number of edges remains upper-bounded. ELC generates all systematic parity-check matrices (the orbit) of the code, so WB-ELC facilitates a restriction to low-weight matrices of this orbit. We propose using ELC and WB-ELC as a source of diversity, to improve iterative soft-input soft-output decoding of high-density parity-check (HDPC) codes, with the sum-product algorithm (SPA). A motivation of ELC-enhanced SPA decoding is locality; that diversity is achieved by local graph action, and is well-suited to the local actions that constitute the SPA and allows for parallel software implementation. Simulation data on the error-rate performance of the proposed SPA-ELC and SPA-WBELC iterative decoding algorithms is shown for several HDPC codes. A gain is reported over SPA decoding, and over a recently proposed algorithm to decode HDPC codes using permutations from Aut(C). ELC-enhanced decoding extends the scope of iterative decoding to codes with trivial Aut(C).

This work is an extension of our previous work on an iterative soft-decision decoder for high-density parity-check codes, using a graph-local operation known as edge-local complementation (ELC). Inferred least reliable codeword positions are targeted by an ELC stage in between sum-product algorithm iterations. A gain is shown over related iterative decoding algorithms - mainly due to an improved heuristic to determine optimum ELC locations in the Tanner graph - both in error-rate performance, as well as complexity in terms of a significant reduction in the required number of ELC operations. We also present a novel damping operation, generalized to the graph-local setting where extrinsic information remains on edges not affected by ELC.

We construct Boolean functions whose non-trivial restrictions are either highly nonlinear with respect to the Walsh-Hadamard or the negahadamard transform. We generalise these properties, identify group actions that preserve them, and obtain complementary sets from our functions.

In this paper, we propose to enhance the performance of the sum-product algorithm (SPA) by interleaving SPA iterations with a random local graph update rule. This rule is known as edge local complementation (ELC), and has the effect of modifying the Tanner graph while preserving the code. We have previously shown how the ELC operation can be used to implement an iterative permutation group decoder (SPA-PD)-one of the most successful iterative soft-decision decoding strategies at small blocklengths. In this work, we exploit the fact that ELC can also give structurally distinct parity-check matrices for the same code. Our aim is to describe a simple iterative decoder, running SPA-PD on distinct structures, based entirely on random usage of the ELC operation. This is called SPA-ELC, and we focus on small blocklength codes with strong algebraic structure. In particular, we look at the extended Golay code and two extended quadratic residue codes. Both error rate performance and average decoding complexity, measured by the average total number of messages required in the decoding, significantly outperform those of the standard SPA, and compares well with SPA-PD. However, in contrast to SPA-PD, which requires a global action on the Tanner graph, we obtain a performance improvement via local action alone. Such localized algorithms are of mathematical interest in their own right, but are also suited to parallel/distributed realizations.

Generalizations of the bent property of a Boolean function are presented, by proposing spectral analysis with respect to a well-chosen set of local unitary transforms. Quadratic Boolean functions are related to simple graphs and it is shown that the orbit generated by successive local complementations on a graph can be found within the transform spectra under investigation. The flat spectra of a quadratic Boolean function are related to modified versions of its associated adjacency matrix.