Constructing APN or 4-differentially uniform permutations achieving all the necessary criteria is an open problem, and the research on it progresses slowly. In ACISP 2011, Carlet put forth an idea for constructing differentially uniform permutations using extension fields, which was illustrated with a construction of a 4-differentially uniform (n,n)-permutation. The permutation has optimum algebraic degree and very good nonlinearity. However, it was proved to be a permutation only for n odd. In this note, we investigate further the construction of differentially uniform permutations using extension fields, and construct a 4-differentially uniform (n,n)-permutation for any n. These permutations also have optimum algebraic degree and very good nonlinearity. Moreover, we consider a more general type of construction, and illustrate it with an example of a 4-differentially uniform (n,n)-permutation with good cryptographic properties.

In algebraic attack on stream ciphers based on LFSRs, the secret key is found by solving an overdefined system of multivariate equations. There are many known algorithms from different point of view to solve the problem, such as linearization, relinearization, XL and Grobner Basis. The simplest method, linearization, treats each monomial of different degrees as a new variable, and consists of variables (the degree of the system of equations is denoted by d). Thus it needs at least equations, i.e. keystream bits to recover the secret key by Gaussian reduction or other. In this paper we firstly propose a concept, called equivalence of LFSRs. On the basis of it, we present a constructive method that can solve an overdefined system of multivariate equations with less keystream bits by extending the primitive polynomial.

Permutation polynomials have important applications in cryptography, coding theory and combinatorial designs. In this letter, we construct four classes of permutation polynomials over 𝔽2n × 𝔽2n, where 𝔽2n is the finite field with 2n elements.

Permutation polynomials have been studied for a long time and have important applications in cryptography, coding theory and combinatorial designs. In this paper, by means of the multivariate method and the resultant, we propose four new classes of permutation quadrinomials over 𝔽q3, where q is a prime power. We also show that they are not quasi-multiplicative equivalent to known ones. Moreover, we compare their differential uniformity with that of some known classes of permutation trinomials for some small q.

In this letter, we give a characterization for a generic construction of bent functions. This characterization enables us to obtain another efficient construction of bent functions and to give a positive answer on a problem of bent functions.

Two classes of 3rd order correlation immune symmetric Boolean functions have been constructed respectively in [1] and [2], in which some interesting phenomena of the algebraic degree have been observed as well. However, a good explanation has not been given. In this paper, we obtain the formulas for the degree of these functions, which can well explain the behavior of their degree.

A Boolean function is said to be correlation immune if its output leaks no information about its input values. Such functions have many applications in computer security practices including the construction of key stream generators from a set of shift registers. Finding methods for easy construction of correlation immune Boolean functions has been an active research area since the introduction of the notion by Siegenthaler. In this paper, we present several constructions of nonpalindromic correlation immune symmetric Boolean functions. Our methods involve finding binomial coefficient identities and obtaining new correlation immune functions from known correlation immune functions. We also consider the construction of higher order correlation immunity symmetric functions and propose a class of third order correlation immune symmetric functions on n variables, where n+1(≥ 9) is a perfect square.

It is well known that the trellises of lattices can be employed to decode efficiently. It was proved in [1] and [2] that if a lattice L has a finite trellis under the coordinate system , then there must exist a basis (b1,b2,,bn) of L such that Wi=span() for 1in. In this letter, we prove this important result in a completely different method, and give an efficient method to compute all bases of this type.

This paper introduces two schemes to put the decoding of the convolutional network code (CNC) into practice, which are named the Intermittent Packet Transmission Scheme (IPTS) and the Redundancy Packet Transmission Scheme (RPTS). According to the decoding formula of the sink nodes, we can see that, at the time k+δ in order to decode the source packet generated at time k, the sink node should know all the source packets generated before k-1. This is impractical. The two schemes we devised make it unnecessary. A construction algorithm is also given about the RPTS networks. For the two schemes, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses and point out their implemented condition.

Trellis diagrams of lattices and the Viterbi algorithm can be used for decoding. It has been known that the numbers of states and labels at every level of any finite trellis diagrams of a lattice L and its dual L* under the same coordinate system are the same. In the paper, we present concrete expressions of the numbers of distinct paths in the trellis diagrams of L and L* under the same coordinate system, which are more concrete than Theorem 2 of [1]. We also give a relation between the numbers of edges in the trellis diagrams of L and L*. Furthermore, we provide the upper bounds on the state numbers of a trellis diagram of the lattice L1L2 by the state numbers of trellis diagrams of lattices L1 and L2.

Wireless sensor network (WSN) using network coding is vulnerable to pollution attacks. Existing authentication schemes addressing this attack either burden the sensor node with a higher computation overhead, or fail to provide an efficient way to mitigate two recently reported attacks: tag pollution attacks and repetitive attacks, which makes them inapplicable to WSN. This paper proposes an efficient hybrid cryptographic scheme for WSN with securing network coding. Our scheme can resist not only normal pollution attacks, but the emerging tag pollution and repetitive attacks in an efficient way. In particular, our scheme is immediately suited for distributing multiple generations using a single public key. Experimental results show that our scheme can significantly improve the computation efficiency at a sensor node under the two above-mentioned attacks.

In this paper, we explicitly construct a large class of symmetric Boolean functions on 2k variables with algebraic immunity not less than d, where integer k is given arbitrarily and d is a given suffix of k in binary representation. If let d = k, our constructed functions achieve the maximum algebraic immunity. Remarkably, 2⌊ log2k ⌋ + 2 symmetric Boolean functions on 2k variables with maximum algebraic immunity are constructed, which are much more than the previous constructions. Based on our construction, a lower bound of symmetric Boolean functions with algebraic immunity not less than d is derived, which is 2⌊ log2d ⌋ + 2(k-d+1). As far as we know, this is the first lower bound of this kind.

A Superconcentrator is a directed acyclic graph with specific properties. The existence of linear-sized supercentrator has been proved in [4]. Since then, the size has been decreased significantly. The best known size is 28N which is proved by U. Schöning in [8]. Our work follows their construction and proves a smaller size superconcentrator.

This letter investigates the space-time block codes from quasi-orthogonal design as a tradeoff between high transmission rate and low decoding complexity. By studying the role orthogonality plays in space-time block codes, upper bound of transmission rate and lower bound of decoding complexity for quasi-orthogonal design are claimed. From this point of view, novel algorithms are developed to construct specific quasi-orthogonal designs achieving these bounds.

In this letter, we present a construction of bent functions which generalizes a work of Zhang et al. in 2016. Based on that, we obtain a cubic bent function in 10 variables and prove that, it has no affine derivative and does not belong to the completed Maiorana-McFarland class, which is opposite to all 6/8-variable cubic bent functions as they are inside the completed Maiorana-McFarland class. This is the first time a theoretical proof is given to show that the cubic bent functions in 10 variables can be outside the completed Maiorana-McFarland class. Before that, only a sporadic example with such properties was known by computer search. We also show that our function is EA-inequivalent to that sporadic one.

Permutation polynomials and their compositional inverses are crucial for construction of Maiorana-McFarland bent functions and their dual functions, which have the optimal nonlinearity for resisting against the linear attack on block ciphers and on stream ciphers. In this letter, we give the explicit compositional inverse of the permutation binomial $f(z)=z^{2^{r}+2}+alpha zinmathbb{F}_{2^{2r}}[z]$. Based on that, we obtain the dual of monomial bent function $f(x)={ m Tr}_1^{4r}(x^{2^{2r}+2^{r+1}+1})$. Our result suggests that the dual of f is not a monomial any more, and it is not always EA-equivalent to f.

In this letter, we discussed some properties of characteristic generators for a finite Abelian group code, proved that any two characteristic generators can not start (end) at the same position and have the same order of the starting (ending) components simultaneously, and that the number of all characteristic generators can be directly computed from the group code itself. These properties are exactly the generalization of the corresponding trellis properties of a linear code over a field.

A method to construct Boolean functions with maximum algebraic immunity have been proposed in . Based on that method, we propose a different method to construct Boolean functions on even variables with maximum algebraic immunity in this letter. By counting on our construction, a lower bound of the number of such Boolean functions is derived, which is the best among all the existing lower bounds.

Counting the number of differentially active S-boxes is of great importance in evaluating the security of a block cipher against differential attack. Mouha et al. proposed a technique based on Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) to automatically calculate a lower bound of the number of differentially active S-boxes for word-oriented block ciphers, and applied it to symmetric ciphers AES and Enocoro-128v2. Later Sun et al. extended the method by introducing bit-level representations for S-boxes and new constraints in the MILP problem, and applied the extended method to PRESENT-80 and LBlock. This kind of methods greatly depends on the constraints in the MILP problem describing the differential propagation of the block cipher. A more accurate description of the differential propagation leads to a tighter bound on the number of differentially active S-boxes. In this paper, we refine the constraints in the MILP problem describing XOR operations, and apply the refined MILP modeling to determine a lower bound of the number of active S-boxes for the Lai-Massey type block cipher FOX in the model of single-key differential attack, and obtain a tighter bound in FOX64 than existing results. Experimental results show that 6, instead of currently known 8, rounds of FOX64 is strong enough to resist against basic single-key differential attack since the differential characteristic probability is upper bounded by 2-64, and thus the maximum differential characteristic probability of 12-round FOX64 is upper bounded by 2-128, where 128 is the key-length of FOX64. We also get the lower bound of the number of differentially active S-boxes for 5-round FOX128, and proved the security of the full-round FOX128 with respect to single-key differential attack.

In this paper, we derive a simple formula to generate a wide-sense systematic generator matrix(we call it quasi-systematic) B for a Reed-Solomon code. This formula can be utilized to construct an efficient interpolation based erasure-only decoder with time complexity O(n2) and space complexity O(n). Specifically, the decoding algorithm requires 3kr + r2 - 2r field additions, kr + r2 + r field negations, 2kr + r2 - r + k field multiplications and kr + r field inversions. Compared to another interpolation based erasure-only decoding algorithm derived by D.J.J. Versfeld et al., our algorithm is much more efficient for high-rate Reed-Solomon codes.