TARU PUBLICATIONS
Journal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography cover
Open Access ·Peer-reviewed·ISSN (Online): 2169-0065·ISSN (Print): 0972-0529

Monthly Journal: Publishes theoretical and applied research in all areas of Discrete Mathematical Sciences, Cryptography, Combinatorics, Elliptic Curves and Information Security.

Issues up to 2022 co-published with and available at:Taylor & Francis Online
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Open Access Research Article

Algebraic construction and security evaluation of substitution boxes using finite field and permutation group techniques

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pp. 4547–4556Vol. 29Issue 10-COctober 2026DOI: 10.47974/JDMSC-3072 Crossmark XML
Received:
01 Apr 2026
Published Online:
31 Oct 2026
Article type:
Research Article
Language:
EN
Article no.:
JDMSC-3072
Pages:
4547–4556

Abstract

S-boxes (substitution boxes) are essential nonlinear elements that guarantee confusion in symmetric cryptosystems, but it is still difficult to come up with structures that have a good algebraic and cryptographic structure. This paper is an attempt to suggest a hybrid construction approach characterized by a combination of finite field GF(2n) transformations and permutation group techniques to create secure and efficient S-boxes. The method is a combination of algebraic inversion, affine mapping and permutation cycles to maximize nonlinearity, objectivity and resistance to differential and linear cryptanalysis. The proposed construction of hybrid S-box uses finite-field inversion, affine transformations and permutation-group operations to enhance the cryptographic substitution properties. The results reported here show a nonlinearity of 114, while AES S-box and traditional S-box have values of 112 and 96, respectively, which represent 1.79% and 18.75% improvement, respectively. The proposed construction meets the AES baseline by +1.4 and +2.4 percentage points on both the Strict Avalanche Criterion (SAC) and Bit Independence Criterion (BIC) respectively. The reported computational time is 11.1 ms which is 11.90% faster than traditional S-box but 7.77% slower than AES. These comparisons suggest that these characteristics are reported to be better with little to be gained in terms of computation.

Keywords

Subject Classifications

11T7168W30

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