The paper discusses cryptanalysis methods and the role of the cryptographic properties of S-boxes in carrying out the corresponding attacks. Symmetric cryptographic transformations have a number of practical advantages in terms of their efficiency, speed and reliability. In this case, S-boxes play an important role in ensuring the robustness of symmetric transformations. To protect algorithms from various cryptanalysis methods, S-boxes must have a number of cryptographic properties and satisfy a number of criteria. Currently, the main attacks for which the properties of S-boxes used in cryptographic algorithms are important are attacks based on linear, differential, algebraic cryptanalysis methods. Other analysis methods are quite specific for a single algorithm, and, as a rule, use the general structure of the algorithm, and not its individual components, such as S-boxes. The paper reviews existing cryptanalysis methods that exploit possible weaknesses in S-boxes.