New differentially 4-uniform permutations from modifications of the inverse function (Q2667074)

This paper proposes new types of permutations suitable for private key cryptosystems based on S-box such as DES or AES, permutations resistant to linear and differential cryptanalysis. The proposed permutations are differentially 4-uniform, a type of permutations studied by many authors. \textit{Y. Li} et al. [``Constructing differentially 4-uniform permutations over \(\mathrm{GF}(2^{2k})\) from the inverse function revisited'', Preprint, \url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/731}] construct differentially 4-uniform permutations over the finite field \(\mathbf{F}_{2^n}\)\, modifying the inverse function in this field by a cycle. The present paper provides differentially 4-uniform permutations modifying the inverse function by two cycles (in fact two transpositions). Section 2 summarizes the necessary background on differential uniformity and nonlinearity. Section 3 generalizes the study of Li, Wang and Yu [loc. cit.], giving sufficient conditions for a permutation, obtained modifying the inverse function by several cycles, to be differentially 4-uniform (Theorem 3.6) and Section 4 particularizes these results to the case of two transpositions, giving necessary and sufficient conditions to find differentially 4-uniform permutations. Section 5 investigates the nonlinearity and the differential-linear uniformity of the permutations obtained by the proposed method and finally Section 6 shows numerical results and comparison with other previous constructions (Tables 1 to 4).