International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Diffusion layers are crucial components of symmetric ciphers‎. ‎These components‎, ‎along with suitable Sboxes‎, ‎can make symmetric ciphers resistant against statistical attacks like linear and differential cryptanalysis‎. ‎Conventional ‎‎MDS diffusion layers, which are defined as matrices over finite fields, have been used in symmetric ciphers such as AES‎, ‎Twofish and SNOW‎. ‎In this paper‎, ‎we study linear, linearized and nonlinear MDS diffusion layers‎. We investigate linearized diffusion layers, ‎which are a generalization of conventional diffusion layers‎; t‎hese diffusion layers are used in symmetric ciphers like SMS4‎, ‎Loiss and ZUC‎. W‎e introduce some ‎new ‎families of linearized MDS diffusion layers ‎and as a consequence, ‎we ‎present a‎ ‎method ‎for ‎construction of ‎‎‎‎randomized linear ‎‎‎‎‎diffusion ‎layers over a finite field. Nonlinear MDS diffusion layers are introduced in Klimov\'s thesis; we investigate nonlinear MDS diffusion layers theoretically, and we present a new family of nonlinear MDS diffusion layers. We show that these nonlinear diffusion layers can be made randomized with a low ‎implementatio‎n cost. An important fact about linearized and nonlinear diffusion layers is that they are more resistant against algebraic attacks in comparison to conventional diffusion layers. A ‎special case of diffusion layers are ‎‎‎(0,1)‎-‎diffusion layers. This type of diffusion layers are used in symmetric ciphers like ARIA‎. ‎W‎e examine (0,1)‎-‎diffusion layers and prove a theorem about them‎. ‎At last‎, ‎we study linearized MDS diffusion layers of symmetric ciphers Loiss, SMS4 and ZUC‎, from the mathematical viewpoint.