Propagation characteristics of \(x\mapsto x^{-1}\) and Kloosterman sums (Q946890)

The inverse permutation \(\sigma: x \mapsto x^{-1}\) appears in the design of the AES cryptosystem. This permutation is considered as a very good mapping. In this paper, the authors study the permutation \(\sigma: x \mapsto x^{-1}\) on the field of order \(2^n\) by means of their component functions \(f_\lambda\). It is proved that the weights of derivatives of \(f_\lambda\) can be expressed in terms of Kloosterman sums. The authors compute some indicators of the propagation characteristics of \(\sigma\) \((\mathcal{M}(\sigma)\) and \(\mathcal{V}(\sigma))\) and they prove that the mapping \(\sigma: x \mapsto x^{-1}\) has good propagation characteristics with respect to these indicators. Moreover, they deduce several new formulas on Kloosterman sums, by using classical formulas which link any Boolean function with its derivatives.