Reversed genetic algorithms for generation of bijective s-boxes with good cryptographic properties

Abstract

Often the S-boxes are the only nonlinear components in a block cipher and as such play an important role in ensuring its resistance to cryptanalysis. Cryptographic properties and constructions of S-boxes have been studied for many years. The most common techniques for constructing S-boxes are: algebraic constructions, pseudo-random generation and a variety of heuristic approaches. Among the latter are the genetic algorithms. In this paper, a genetic algorithm working in a reversed way is proposed. Using the algorithm we can rapidly and repeatedly generate a large number of strong bijective S-boxes of each dimension from (8 × 8) to (16 × 16), which have sub-optimal properties close to the ones of S-boxes based on finite field inversion, but have more complex algebraic structure and possess no linear redundancy.