ASIACRYPT 2004 Preface

The 10th Annual ASIACRYPT 2004 was held in Jeju Island, Korea, from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9, 2004. This conference was organized by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) in cooperation with KIISC (Korean Institute of Information Security and Cryptology) and IRIS (International Research center for Information Security) at ICU (Information and Communications University) and financially supported by MIC (Ministry of Information and Communication) in Korea.

The conference received, from 30 countries, 208 submissions that represent the current state of work in the cryptographic community worldwide, covering all areas of cryptologic research. Each paper without authors' information was reviewed by at least three members of the program committee, and the papers (co-)authored by a member of the program committee were reviewed by at least six members. We also blinded the reviewers name among the reviewers until the final decision by using pseudonyms. The reviews were then followed by deep discussions on the papers, which greatly contributed to the quality of the final selection. In most cases, extensive comments were sent to the authors.

Among 208 submissions, the program committee selected 36 papers. Two submissions were merged into a single paper, yielding the total of 35 papers accepted for presentation in the technical program of the conference. Many high-quality works could not be accepted because of the competitive nature of the conference and the challenging task of selecting a program. These proceedings contain revised versions of the accepted papers. These revisions have not been checked for correctness, and the authors bear full responsibility for the contents of their papers.

This was the first year in which the program committee selected a recipient for the Best Paper Award for the ASIACRYPT conference after lengthy discussion on its procedure and voting among program committee members. The winner of the prize for the Best Paper was Claus Diem from University of Essen for his paper, ``The XL-algorithm and a Conjecture from Commutative Algebra.''

The conference program included two invited lectures. Adi Shamir, from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, talked on "Stream Ciphers: Dead or Alive?" and Ho-Ick Suk, the Deputy Minister for Informatization Planning at MIC of Korea, talked on "Information Security in Korea IT839 Strategy." In addition, the conference also included one rump session, chaired by Moti Yung, which featured short informal talks.

I wish to thank the program committee, whose members worked very hard over several months. I am also very grateful to the external referees who contributed with their special expertise to the selection process. Their work is highly appreciated.

The submission of all papers was received electronically using Web-based submission software which was provided by Chanathip Namprempre with modifications by Andre Adelsbach. During the review process, the program committee was mainly communicated using the Web-based review software developed by Bart Preneel, Wim Moreau, and Joris Claessens.

It is my pleasure to thank the General Chair, Prof Kwangjo Kim, for all his work in organizing the conference, and for the pleasant collaboration and various pieces of advice. In addition, I would like to extend my gratitude to the members of the local organizing committee. For financial support of the conference, the organizing committee and I gratefully acknowledge the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) of Korea.

I am also grateful to the secretariat for program committee. Special thanks to Sung Ho Yoo and Young Tae Youn for maintaining both the submission server and the review server, and to Yong Ho Hwang and Yeon Hyeong Yang who served as technical assistants to the chairs and helped me with the various technical and technological aspects of running the committee and preparing the conference proceedings, and to others for miscellaneous jobs.

Finally, we would like to thanks all other people who provided any assistance, and all the authors who submitted their papers to ASIACRYPT 2004, as well as all the participants from all over the world.