Deciding EA-equivalence via invariants

We define a family of efficiently computable invariants for (n,m)-functions under EA-equivalence, and observe that, unlike the known invariants such as the differential spectrum, algebraic degree, and extended Walsh spectrum, in the case of quadratic APN functions over $\mathbb {F}_{2^n}$ F 2 n with n even, these invariants take on many different values for functions belonging to distinct equivalence classes. We show how the values of these invariants can be used constructively to implement a test for EA-equivalence of functions from $\mathbb {F}_{2}^{n}$ F 2 n to $\mathbb {F}_{2}^{m}$ F 2 m ; to the best of our knowledge, this is the first algorithm for deciding EA-equivalence without resorting to testing the equivalence of associated linear codes.

Revisiting some results on APN and algebraic immune functions

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>We push a little further the study of two recent characterizations of almost perfect nonlinear (APN) functions. We state open problems about them, and we revisit in their perspective a well-known result from Dobbertin on APN exponents. This leads us to a new result about APN power functions and more general APN polynomials with coefficients in a subfield <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ \mathbb{F}_{2^k} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, which eases the research of such functions. It also allows to construct automatically many differentially uniform functions from them (this avoids calculations for proving their differential uniformity as done in a recent paper, which are tedious and specific to each APN function). In a second part, we give simple proofs of two important results on Boolean functions, one of which deserves to be better known but needed clarification, while the other needed correction.</p>

Generalized isotopic shift construction for APN functions

In this work we give several generalizations of the isotopic shift construction, introduced recently by Budaghyan et al. (IEEE Trans Inform Theory 66:5299–5309, 2020), when the initial function is a Gold function. In particular, we derive a general construction of APN functions which covers several unclassified APN functions for $$n=8$$ n = 8 and produces fifteen new APN functions for $$n=9$$ n = 9 .