Generation of Boolean functions using Genetic Algorithm for cryptographic applications

Boolean functions exhibiting strong cryptographic characteristics are essential crypto primitive to be included in the design of secure cryptosystems. It is not only common to incorporate Boolean functions in the design of symmetric block and stream ciphers but they also have a key place in the design of cryptographic hash functions. Strong Boolean functions make the system secure and resistant against cryptanalytic attacks. A wide range of approaches have been adopted in the discovery of Boolean functions that excel in terms of several cryptographic characteristics. In this paper, we present a new scheme based on Genetic Algorithm to generate Boolean functions which satisfy balancedness, correlation immunity, algebraic degree and nonlinearity characteristics. Proposed scheme generates strong Boolean functions with desired values of these characteristics.