IACR ASIACRYPT 2008, Preface

The 14th International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptology and Information Security - ASIACRYPT 2008 - was held in Melbourne in December 7--11, 2008. The conference was sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) in cooperation with the Center for Advanced Computing -- Cryptography and Algorithms (ACAC), Macquarie University, Deakin University, the Research Network for a Secure Australia (RNSA) and SECIA. ASIACRYPT 2008 was chaired by Lynn Batten and I had the honor of serving as the Program Chair.

There were 208 submissions from which 12 papers were withdrawn. Each paper got assigned to at least three referees. Papers submitted by the members of the Program Committee got assigned to five referees. In the first stage of the review process, the submitted papers were read and evaluated by the PC members and then in the second stage, the papers were scrutinized during an extensive discussion. Finally, the Program Committee chose 33 papers to be included in the conference program. The authors of the accepted papers had three weeks for revision and preparation of final versions. The revised papers were not subject to editorial review and the authors bear full responsibility for their contents.

The Program Committee selected three best papers. They were: Speeding up Pollard Rho Method on Prime Fields by Jung Hee Cheon, Jin Hong, and Minkyu Kim, A modular security analysis of the TLS handshake protocol by Paul Morrissey, Nigel P. Smart and Bogdan Warinschi and Breaking the F-FCSR-H stream cipher in real time by Martin Hell and Thomas Johansson. The authors of the three papers were invited to submit the full versions of their papers to Journal of Cryptology. The authors of the first paper: Jung Hee Cheon, Jin Hong and Minkyu Kim were recipients of the Best Paper Award.

The conference program included two invited lectures by Andrew Chi-Chih Yao and John Cannon. Andrew Chi-Chih Yao was talking about Some Perspectives on Complexity-Based Cryptography and an abstract has been included in the proceedings.

There are many people who contributed to the success of ASIACRYPT 2008. First I would like to thank the authors of all papers (both accepted and rejected) for submitting their papers to the conference. A special thanks go to the members of the Program Committee and the external referees who gave their time, expertise and enthusiasm in order to ensure that each paper received a thorough and fair review. I am grateful to Andy Clark, Helena Handschuh, Arjen Lenstra and Bart Preneel for their support and advice; I thank Vijayakrishnan Pasupathinathan for taking care of the iChair server and Michelle Kang and Judy Chow for maintenance of the conference web site. Shai Halevi deserves our thanks for the registration site. Judy Chow, the conference secretary is warmly thanked for her enormous contribution responding to participant queries and on site at the conference registration. I would like to thank Matthieu Finiasz and Thomas Baignères from EPFL, LASEC, Switzerland for letting us use their iChair software that was used not only as the submission server but also facilitated the review and discussion process. Finally, I would like to thank Ed Dawson for organizing a traditional Rump Session.

December 2008                            Josef Pieprzyk