Abstract
Substitution box (S-box), being the only nonlinear component, contributes to the confusion creating capability of a cryptosystem. Keeping in view the predominant role of S-box, many design algorithms to synthesize cryptographically stronger S-boxes have gained pivotal attention. A quick review of these algorithms shows that all these ideas mainly concentrate on the choice of bijective Boolean functions, with nonobservance to the irreducible polynomial that generates the Galois field. In this paper, we propose that the selection of irreducible polynomial has a deep influence on the highly desirable features of an S-box such as nonlinearity, strict avalanche, bit independence, linear approximation probability, and differential approximation probability. We underpin our claim by investigating a detailed model, which deploys the same algorithm but different polynomials and produces unusual changes in the results regarding the performance parameters of S-box.