On the group generated by the round functions of translation based ciphers over arbitrary finite fields (Q2434409)

The authors continue their work on translation based ciphers (see \textit{A. Caranti} et al. [Appl. Algebra Eng. Commun. Comput. 20, No. 5--6, 339--350 (2009; Zbl 1178.94183); Des. Codes Cryptography 52, No. 3, 293--301 (2009; Zbl 1174.94011)]). They extend their results to translation based ciphers defined over arbitrary finite fields. For this, they investigate the permutation group which is generated by the round functions of such a cipher. Under some certain cryptographic conditions, this group is primitive. Under some additional minor conditions, one can show that, the group is, in fact, the symmetric or the alternating group. The proof is done by applying the O'Nan-Scott classification of primitive groups and analysing the remaining cases.