Title: Cryptographic strength evaluation of AES s-box variants

Authors: Umer Waqas; Shazia Afzal; Mubeen Akhtar Mir; Muhammad Yousaf

Addresses: RIPHAH Institute of System Engineering, RIPHAH International University, Islamabad, Pakistan ' RIPHAH Institute of System Engineering, RIPHAH International University, Islamabad, Pakistan ' Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences, PIEAS University, Islamabad, Pakistan ' RIPHAH Institute of System Engineering, RIPHAH International University, Islamabad, Pakistan

Abstract: In recent years, researchers have constructed AES s-box variants by customising the values of the parameters in the equation of AES s-box. Strength of these s-box variants is evaluated against the cryptographic properties like avalanche effect, nonlinearity and bit independence criteria, however, there are other important cryptographic properties of s-box, which need to be evaluated before adopting the s-box. In this paper, all types of AES s-box variants are reproduced and evaluated against ten cryptographic properties. The results of five properties, differential and linear probability, nonlinearity, balance and algebraic degree remains the same for any s-box variant due to isomorphic equivalence nature of the variants; whereas, strict avalanche effect, bit independence criteria, correlation immunity, cyclic and fix-point properties showed different results for different s-box variant. Finally, the results are compared with the standard AES s-box and conclusion of overall security of s-box variants with respect to selected properties is conferred.

Keywords: absolute error; AES s-box; bit independence criteria; BIC; CAM variants; CIP variants; CIPA variants; differential probability; DP; information security; LP; nonlinearity; s-box variants; strict avalanche criteria; SAC.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2021.114705

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2021 Vol.14 No.3/4, pp.263 - 280

Received: 08 Aug 2017
Accepted: 03 Jun 2018

Published online: 04 May 2021 *

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