Paper 2025/457

A 10-bit S-box generated by Feistel construction from cellular automata

Thomas Prévost, Université Côte d'Azur
Bruno Martin, Université Côte d'Azur
Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new 10-bit S-box generated from a Feistel construction. The subpermutations are generated by a 5-cell cellular automaton based on a unique well-chosen rule and bijective affine transformations. In particular, the cellular automaton rule is chosen based on empirical tests of its ability to generate good pseudorandom output on a ring cellular automaton. Similarly, Feistel's network layout is based on empirical data regarding the quality of the output S-box. We perform cryptanalysis of the generated 10-bit S-box: we test the properties of algebraic degree, algebraic complexity, nonlinearity, strict avalanche criterion, bit independence criterion, linear approximation probability, differential approximation probability, differential uniformity and boomerang uniformity of our S-box, and relate them to those of the AES S-box. We find security properties comparable to or sometimes even better than those of the standard AES S-box. We believe that our S-box could be used to replace the 5-bit substitution of ciphers like ASCON.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Foundations
Publication info
Preprint.
Keywords
S-boxBlock cipherCellular automataFeistel permutationBoolean functions
Contact author(s)
thomas prevost @ univ-cotedazur fr
bruno martin @ univ-cotedazur fr
History
2025-03-12: approved
2025-03-11: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2025/457
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2025/457,
      author = {Thomas Prévost and Bruno Martin},
      title = {A 10-bit S-box generated by Feistel construction from cellular automata},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2025/457},
      year = {2025},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/457}
}
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