Almost Security of Cryptographic Boolean Functions

Abstract

The propagation criterion, PC(/spl lscr/) of order k, is one of the most general cryptographic criteria of secure Boolean functions f. In this paper, we formalize its /spl epsiv/-almost version. The new definition requires that f(X)+f(X+/spl Delta/) is almost uniformly distributed while in the original definition, it must be strictly uniformly distributed. Better parameters are then obtained than the strict PC(/spl lscr/) of order k functions. To construct /spl epsiv/-almost PC(/spl lscr/) of order k functions, we introduce a notion of domain distance.