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In Cryptanalysis of Block Ciphers with Overdefined Systems of Equations Nicolas Courtois and Josef Pieprzyk define 23 so called bi-affine equations (in Appendix A of the paper) between the input x and the output z of the rijndael sbox.

Then they say in A.1 that it is possible to get "not only" 23 bi-affine but 39 fully quadratic equations. And they further describe that the additional 16 equations come from a) $x^4y = x^3$ and b) $y^4x = y^3$. ($y = x^{-1}$ is the result of the inversion in the sbox)

I assume they produce these 16 equations in the very same way how they generated the 23 bi-affine equations (which is described here providing more details):

  1. They transform/rearrange the equations a) and b) to have 0 on one side.
  2. Then they "split" each equation a) and b) in 8 equations for each coefficient, so we have 16 equations in total for both a) and b).
  3. Then they substitute all the $y_i$ using the affine transformation of the sbox: $$ z = M\cdot y + \textrm{63}_{16} \\ y = M^{-1}\cdot z + M^{-1} \cdot \textrm{63}_{16} \\ = M^{-1}\cdot z + \textrm{05}_{16} \\ $$ which resolves to: $$\begin{cases} y_7 = z_{1} + z_{4} + z_{6} \\ y_6 = z_{0} + z_{3} + z_{5} \\ y_5 = z_{2} + z_{4} + z_{7} \\ y_4 = z_{1} + z_{3} + z_{6} \\ y_3 = z_{0} + z_{2} + z_{5} \\ y_2 = z_{1} + z_{4} + z_{7} + 1 \\ y_1 = z_{0} + z_{3} + z_{6} \\ y_0 = z_{2} + z_{5} + z_{7} + 1 \\ \end{cases} $$

I hope these steps are correct, but this way I get to the same 23 bi-affine equations as listed in the papers 1 and 2.

If I do this with a) and b) I get the following result (only one equation out of 16 as example): $$ 0 = x_{1}^{4} z_{0} + x_{6}^{4} z_{0} + x_{0}^{4} z_{1} + x_{1}^{4} z_{1} + x_{2}^{4} z_{1} + x_{7}^{4} z_{1} + x_{1}^{4} z_{2} + x_{2}^{4} z_{2} + x_{4}^{4} z_{2} + x_{6}^{4} z_{2} + x_{6}^{4} z_{3} + x_{7}^{4} z_{3} + x_{0}^{4} z_{4} + x_{1}^{4} z_{4} + x_{3}^{4} z_{4} + x_{4}^{4} z_{4} + x_{5}^{4} z_{4} + x_{7}^{4} z_{4} + x_{1}^{4} z_{5} + x_{3}^{4} z_{5} + x_{4}^{4} z_{5} + x_{5}^{4} z_{5} + x_{0}^{4} z_{6} + x_{1}^{4} z_{6} + x_{2}^{4} z_{6} + x_{3}^{4} z_{6} + x_{4}^{4} z_{6} + x_{6}^{4} z_{6} + x_{3}^{4} z_{7} + x_{5}^{4} z_{7} + x_{6}^{4} z_{7} + x_{5}^{4} + x_{7}^{4} + x_{2}^{2} x_{3} + x_{1} x_{3}^{2} + x_{3} x_{4}^{2} + x_{4}^{3} + x_{1}^{2} x_{5} + x_{3}^{2} x_{5} + x_{1} x_{5}^{2} + x_{2} x_{5}^{2} + x_{4} x_{5}^{2} + x_{3}^{2} x_{6} + x_{4}^{2} x_{6} + x_{0} x_{6}^{2} + x_{2} x_{6}^{2} + x_{5} x_{6}^{2} + x_{0}^{2} x_{7} + x_{2}^{2} x_{7} + x_{5}^{2} x_{7} + x_{6}^{2} x_{7} + x_{0} x_{7}^{2} + x_{3} x_{7}^{2} + x_{5} x_{7}^{2} + x_{6} x_{7}^{2}\\ $$

I would assume that every exponent $\neq 0$ of any $x_i$ and $z_i$ can be ignored because those variables representent coefficients in $GF(2)$ and can be either $0$ or $1$. *

So when I ignore the exponents this looks very similar to the bi-affine equations (a sum of combinations of $x_i$ and $y_i$, sometimes with terms of only $x_i$ or $y_i$ - the only thing which is new is that there are terms of $x_i$ and $x_j$ multiplied together) and I would like to understand the difference!

So how are these equations "fully quadratic" and what does it mean exactly? What is the difference to the bi-affine equations besides the number of the equations?


*: This was also necessary in the process of generating the 23 bi-affine equations, where the equation $x^{128} = y^{128} x$ was used. This led to $x_i^{128}$ in the result which to my understanding can also be shortened to $x_i$.

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Looking at appendix A of the eprint I'd say that the authors call a polynomial of algebraic degree at most $2$ bi-affine, if it contains some terms of algebraic degree $1$, and fully quadratic, if there are no such terms.

(Working over fields of characteristic $2$ the map $x\mapsto x^2$ is linear over the field with two elements and of algebraic degree $1$.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you, this makes sense to me. But when I calculate all the 16 "fully quadratic" equations in GF(2) like mentioned above, I also find a constant term in the very last equation - so it still confuses me. $\endgroup$
    – ph_0
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 10:06

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