On second-order nonlinearity and maximum algebraic immunity of some bent functions in \mathcal{PS}^{+}

The rth-order nonlinearity and algebraic immunity of Boolean function play a central role against several known attacks on stream and block ciphers. Since its maximum equals the covering radius of the rth-order Reed-Muller code, it also plays an important role in coding theory. The computation of exact value or high lower bound on the rth-order nonlinearity of a Boolean function is very complected/challenging problem, especially when r>1. In this article, we identify a subclass of \({\mathcal{D}}_{0}\) type bent functions constructed by modifying well known Dillon functions having sharper bound on their second-order nonlinearity. We further, identify a subclass of bent functions in \({\mathcal {PS}}^{+}\) class with maximum possible algebraic immunity. The result is proved by using the well known conjecture proposed by Tu and Deng (Des. Codes Cryptogr. 60(1):1–14, 2011). To obtain rth-order nonlinearity (r>2), that is, whole nonlinearity profile of the constructed bent functions is still an open problem.