Nonlinearity preserving post-transformations

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Matematik Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2004

Öğrenci: İSA SERTKAYA

Danışman: ALİ DOĞANAKSOY

Özet:

Boolean functions are accepted to be cryptographically strong if they satisfy some common pre-determined criteria. It is expected that any design criteria should remain invariant under a large group of transformations due to the theory of similarity of secrecy systems proposed by Shannon. One of the most important design criteria for cryptographically strong Boolean functions is the nonlinearity criterion. Meier and Staffelbach studied nonlinearity preserving transformations, by considering the invertible transformations acting on the arguments of Boolean functions, namely the pre-transformations. In this thesis, first, the results obtained by Meier and Staffelbach are presented. Then, the invertible transformations acting on the truth tables of Boolean functions, namely the post-transformations, are studied in order to determine whether they keep the nonlinearity criterion invariant. The equivalent counterparts of Meier and Staffelbach̕s results are obtained in terms of the post-transformations. In addition, the existence of nonlinearity preserving post-transformations, which are not equivalent to pre-transformations, is proved. The necessary and sufficient conditions for an affine post-transformation to preserve nonlinearity are proposed and proved. Moreover, the sufficient conditions for an non-affine post-transformation to keep nonlinearity invariant are proposed. Furthermore, it is proved that the smart hill climbing method, which is introduced to improve nonlinearity of Boolean functions by Millan et. al., is equivalent to applying a post-transformation to a single Boolean function. Finally, the necessary and sufficient condition for an affine pre-transformation to preserve the strict avalanche criterion is proposed and proved.