A 10-bit S-box generated by Feistel construction from cellular automata
Cryptography and Security
2025-07-04 v1
Abstract
We propose a new 10-bit S-box generated from a Feistel construction. The subpermutations are generated by a 5-cell cellular automaton based on a unique well-chosen rule and bijective affine transformations. In particular, the cellular automaton rule is chosen based on empirical tests of its ability to generate good pseudorandom output on a ring cellular automaton. Similarly, Feistel's network layout is based on empirical data regarding the quality of the output S-box. We perform cryptanalysis of the generated 10-bit S-box, and we find security properties comparable to or sometimes even better than those of the standard AES S-box. We believe that our S-box could be used to replace the 5-bit substitution of ciphers like ASCON.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.02489,
title = {A 10-bit S-box generated by Feistel construction from cellular automata},
author = {Thomas Prévost and Bruno Martin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.02489},
year = {2025}
}