************************ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ************************ The IACR Board of Directors met on May 2, 2004 during Eurocrypt 2004 in Interlaken. Reports were presented on the disposition of Eurocrypt 2003, Crypto 2003, Asiacrypt 2003, CHES 2003, Eurocrypt 2004, Crypto 2004, Asiacrypt 2004, CHES 2004, FSE 2004, and Eurocrypt 2005. Additional reports were presented on the Newsletter, the Journal of Cryptology, IACR finances, and IACR Fellows Selection Committee. A special report was presented on IT strategy issues. The Board discussed and agreed to reviving the practice of awarding "in cooperation with the IACR" status to appropriate non-IACR conferences and workshops. The Board also discussed the apparently growing problem of duplicate parallel submissions of similar papers to multiple conferences. The Board appointed an Election Committee consisting of Dawson, Hughes, and Quisquater. The Board accepted a proposal to hold Eurocrypt 2006 in St. Petersburg, Russia with Anatoly Lebedev as General Chair. The Board voted to ask Serge Vaudenay to serve as Eurocrypt 2006 Program Chair. The Board accepted a proposal to hold FSE 2005 in Paris, France. The Board voted to encourage IACR Program Committees to establish "best paper" awards. ************************ DETAILED MINUTES ************************ Board of Directors Meeting Eurocrypt Interlaken 2 May 2004 Board President Clark called the meeting to order at 10:00. Present were Benaloh, Berson, Biham, Cachin, Camenisch, Clark, Damgaard, Dawson, Hughes, Kim, Knudsen, Langford, Lenstra, Maurer, McCurley, Preneel, and Quisquater. In addition, Greg Rose and Junji Shikata were present. A Proxy was held for Wright by Berson. ________________________________________________________________________ The agenda for the meeting comprised the following. Opening Matters =============== - Welcome participants - identification of proxies (Clark) (5) - Review and approve agenda (All) (5) - Approve Minutes from last meeting (Benaloh/Clark) (5) - Review of Actions from last meeting (Benaloh/Clark) (10) - Matters arising from last meeting (Benaloh/Clark) (10) - Eurocrypt 2004 status (Camenisch) (5) Reports ======= - Newsletter/eprint archive report (Cachin) (5) - Journal of Cryptology report (Maurer) (5) - Financial report (Langford) (5) Committees ========== - IT Strategy/Online transactions (McCurley) (20) - Appoint 2004 Election Committee (Clark) (5) Past Conferences/Workshops ========================== - Eurocrypt 2003 review (?) (5) - Crypto 2003 review (Rose) (5) - Asiacrypt 2003 review (?) (5) - CHES 2003 review (Quisquater) (5) - FSE 2004 review (Preneel/Clark) (2) - PKC 2004 review (?) Forthcoming Conferences ======================= - CHES 2004 Update (Quisquater) (5) - Crypto 2004 (Hughes) (5) - Eurocrypt 2005 (Damgaard) (5) - Asiacrypt steering committee report (?) (10) - Discuss Asiacrypt 2005 Local issues (Preneel) (10) - Asiacrypt 2006 proposal (Prof. Pei) (15) - FSE 2005 proposal (Preneel) (10) - CHES 2005 Informal Proposal (Quisquater) (5) - PKC 06 Proposal (10) - Eurocrypt 2007 Update (Preneel) (5) Program Chairs ============== - Program and General Chair List Maintenance (Benaloh) (5) - Discuss/Appoint Asiacrypt 2006 Program Chair (Benaloh/Clark) (10) - Discuss/Appoint Eurocrypt 2006 Program Chair (Benaloh/Clark) (10) Other Business ============== - "In Co-Operation With" Status (Clark) (2) - Cooperation between IACR and ITS (IEEE Information Theory Society) (Junji Shikata) (10) - Distinguished Lecturer Crypto 2005 (Clark) (5) - The email bcc protocol problem (Clark) (1) - The protocol for parallel submission problem (Preneel) (5) - Further S-V CD to fill gaps in coverage (Clark/Preneel) (5) - Best paper award (Clark - obo Vaudenay) (5) Closing Matters =============== - Draft agenda for general business meeting of members (all) (10) - Review of action items ________________________________________________________________________ Clark began by asking that laptops be used during the meeting only for IACR business and that mobile phones be shut off (except, of course, for the conference organizer). The agenda was then reviewed and no amendments were offered. The previous meeting minutes were then reviewed and several corrections were offered. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then reported on open action items. He indicated that Preneel still had not received feedback from Eurocrypt 2003 General Chair Gawinecki. Haber arrived at this time. Clark reported that Langford had completed the finances for Eurocrypt 2003. He said that issues regarding the relationship between the IACR and Springer-Verlag were still under discussion. He indicated that McCurley was still working on migration of the IACR database. Clark said that he was still seeking additional IT support. He also said that McCurley was still working on issues regarding the relationship with the IACR Secretariat and that Clark, Langford, and Micky Swick were still working to define terms of reference for the Secretariat. ________________________________________________________________________ Eurocrypt 2004 General Chair Camenisch then reported on the status of the conference. He said that there had been 410 registrants as of 1 May of which all but 30 had prepaid, that everything was going smoothly, and that finances were expected to be on target. ________________________________________________________________________ Eurocrypt 2004 Program Chair Cachin then reported on the conference. He said that the rump session would be in an "unusual" setting that would include a band. He added that the program was good with 36 papers accepted out of 206 submissions (more than any prior IACR conference). McCurley asked about interaction with the IACR Secretariat. Cachin reported that there had been some issues with data for a mailing that had been sent in a zip file which was discarded resulting in an unrevised mailing being sent to members. McCurley asked who in the Secretariat had been worked with, and Cachin and Camenisch said they dealt mostly with Joe Allegretti and to a lesser extent with Sally Vito. ________________________________________________________________________ Newsletter Editor Cachin then reported on the Newsletter and ePrint Archive. He said that there were no issues with the Newsletter but that the ePrint Archive was receiving many more questionable submissions. Preneel asked whether this process could be somehow automated or delegated, and Cachin replied that he had solicited some help. Haber asked how many submissions were rejected, and Cachin responded that the number was approximately 20%. Biham asked whether this meant that about 40 submissions were rejected per year, and Cachin confirmed this number. Langford asked whether the same people were responsible for most of the rejections, and Cachin replied that some but not all were from a small set of frequent submitters. Clark inquired about the magnitude of the problem, and Cachin responded that it was not yet substantial. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark noted that Journal of Cryptology Editor-in-Chief Maurer was not present but that there was nothing new to report. ________________________________________________________________________ Treasurer Langford then presented the highlights of a pre-circulated report. She said that the IACR had endured a difficult year in 2003. She detailed an approximately $40,000 loss incurred by Eurocrypt 2003, a small surplus returned by Crypto 2003, and an approximately $500 loss (corrected from the original report) suffered by Asiacrypt 2003. She then thanked McCurley for his efforts at establishing web-based registration -- noting that there had been 8 transactions in the initial test. Dawson asked about the financial status of IACR sponsored workshops. Langford replied that she thought that PKC was close to even, and Preneel responded that he thought that FSE was also close to even. McCurley asked how workshop financials were run, and Langford responded that the finances were managed independently of IACR conference financials. McCurley suggested that a persistence of accounts would be nice to have. Clark then reported that he had researched multi-currency accounts and had found HSBC to be the best option. He added that costs were still uncertain and that authentication of authorized signatures appeared to be cumbersome. McCurley noted that Wells-Fargo was willing to do this but that the costs would be very high. Langford then added that credit card payments were being run through Wells-Fargo and asked if a single account would be better. Camenisch noted that setting up a local account for Eurocrypt 2004 had been easy, and Cachin added that local accounts have advantages and organizers would need them anyway. McCurley replied that the infrastructure required to receive money into new accounts is difficult. Clark took an action item to attempt to formalize finances of IACR workshops and check further with the Secretariat about its possible role in this matter. Berson then asked about IACR assets, and Langford replied that net assets were approximately $367,000 as of January 1 and had been approximately $305,000 the prior year. Rose noted that since the association between IACR and its sponsored workshops is recent, the Secretariat may not be up to date on the essential details. Preneel asked about the effect on monetary changes, and Langford replied that there is an effort made to separate out currency fluctuation when feasible. Clark added that budget proposals include exchange rate projections. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then made a presentation regarding IT status and options. He described the scope of his study as including the membership database, conference registration, electronic payments, and a variety of other topics which were deferred for this report comprising e-mail issues, web site management, the ePrint Archive, conference submission and review software, and the IACR archive. He described the goals of better integration, but expressed concern at the difficulty of outsourcing since it would pose issues with the By-Laws, the Secretariat, and the small size of the IACR. He added that the membership database, which is currently in Access format, is labor intensive to manage and that he planned to migrate it to another database management system. Security concerns were also identified as a major issue. McCurley noted that there were many good aspects of the current web host at Southwest Cyber Port but also many limitations. He then described the electronic registration pilot which is using an integrated membership database and authorize.net for payment processing. McCurley expressed the hope that management of IT could be put under the purview of the Membership Secretary and described his desire to transition that effort soon since he did not intent to seek re-election to the Board. Clark and the Board thanked McCurley for his efforts. Damgaard asked what impact this would have on General Chairs, and McCurley responded that General Chairs must be able to manage the IT system and deal with problems. Clark then noted that there had been a previous action item that he had together with McCurley to prepare a strawman document. McCurley replied that a document had been written for Crypto 2003, and the action item was closed. Clark then noted that the Membership Secretary position was open and said that he would revise the terms of reference for the position to include IT. McCurley noted that this role also overlaps that of the Newsletter Editor, and Clark committed to discuss this with McCurley and Cachin and present a plan at the forthcoming Crypto conference Board meeting. McCurley then asked what would be presented at the Membership meeting. Clark said that he would have to begin by meeting with upcoming General Chairs, and Hughes committed his cooperation. Clark then said that at the Membership meeting he would present a commitment to provide on-line registration for Crypto 2004. McCurley noted that the electronic process would separate conference registration from room and board reservations. Rose then asked if Southwest Cyber Port would manage back-ups and security patches, and McCurley replied that they would do so only if the IACR system were configured identically to their own. Rose then suggested that we consider purchasing more bandwidth from Southwest Cyber Port rather than purchasing a new machine. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then turned the discussion to planning for the 2004 elections. He noted that many offices would be up for election and poled Board members as to their intentions. Clark began by stating his intention to stand for re-election as IACR President but committed himself to serving at most one more term. Preneel indicated his intention to stand for re-election as Vice President. Benaloh stated that he did not intend to seek re-election as Secretary. Langford stated that she did not intend to seek re-election as Treasurer. McCurley stated that he did not intend to seek re-election to the Board. Biham said that he was unsure as to whether he would seek re-election to the Board. Matsumoto was not present. Clark then asked for volunteers for the 2004 Election Committee. Dawson, Quisquater, and Hughes agreed to serve. Hughes suggested that paper ballots may be less reliable than web-based alternatives. McCurley noted that the Election Committee has responsibility both to run the election and seek candidates. Clark encouraged Board members to also solicit candidates, and Preneel encouraged an earlier start to the process. The Election Committee accepted this responsibility. ________________________________________________________________________ The Board recessed for a break at 11:17. The Board reconvened at 11:31. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then reported on the work of the IACR Fellows Selection Committee. He thanked the committee for its work and noted that there had been ten nominations from which six Fellows had been selected. Clark then announced that the membership of the Selection Committee would remain unchanged but that Damgaard would take over as Committee Chair. Lenstra asked about targeted number of additional IACR Fellows, and Damgaard replied that he expected smaller numbers in the future. Clark announced that he would award plaques to the new Fellows at the Eurocrypt banquet. Damgaard asked that members be reminded that the fellowship selection process is continuing, and Haber suggested that this be mentioned at the conference opening. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark and Langford then proceeded to a review of Eurocrypt 2003 but said there was nothing to add beyond the prior report. ________________________________________________________________________ Rose then reported on Crypto 2003. He said that the conference returned a surplus of approximately $50,000. He noted that this was partially due to a catering glitch which resulted in too little food being provided at the rump session. Rose added that he found Joe Allegretti and the Secretariat easy to work with. He also noted that visas were a problem for some and suggested a three to four month lead in future visa applications. Clark noted that it is IACR policy to hold conferences only in locations that allow full attendance. ________________________________________________________________________ Asiacrypt Steering Committee Chair Dawson then reported on Asiacrypt 2003. He said that there were 50 student attendees and a total of 40 total Taiwanese attendees together with 110 attendees from outside of Taiwan. He added that the conference was a success and had had about 170 total submissions. Knudsen noted that he has a web page with statistics about IACR conference submissions. ________________________________________________________________________ Quisquater then reported on CHES 2003. He said that there were 230 attendees and that 32 papers were accepted from among 110 submissions. He added that there were 3 invited talks and a panel. Quisquater said that the workshop had been held in Cologne, Germany, that many student grants had been awarded, and that a CD of past CHES workshops was produced and given to attendees. ________________________________________________________________________ Preneel then reported on FSE 2004. He said that the workshop had been held in New Delhi, India, that 27 papers were accepted from among 75 submissions, and that there were 65 regular and 10 student attendees. Preneel said that the workshop lost approximately $900 that would be covered by the local committee. He added that registration costs in excess of US$100 were difficult for many Indian professors. ________________________________________________________________________ No report was received on PKC 2004. ________________________________________________________________________ Quisquater then reported on the status of CHES 2004. He began by saying that there needs to be greater formalization of the relationship between the IACR and the CHES Steering Committee. He then said that the workshop would be held in the time between SAC and Crypto and that 32 papers had been accepted from among the 125 submissions. Quisquater said that IACR membership dues had been collected but that they had mistakenly been listed as $80 rather than $88. He noted that there had been some issues with duplicate submissions and added that it was too late to establish electronic registration for the workshop. ________________________________________________________________________ Crypto 2004 General Chair Hughes then reported on the status of the conference. He said that there had been a 6% increase in non-housing costs but that housing costs would be unchanged. He added that issuance of letters of invitation had been a significant issue. McCurley suggested that the General Chair Guidelines include setting the break-even threshold at 80% of the prior year's registration unless extenuating circumstances exist. Berson then noted that the National Academy of Sciences has a web site suggesting how to best write letters of invitation. ________________________________________________________________________ Asiacrypt 2004 General Chair Kim then reported on the status of the conference. He said that the web page was up and that the submission deadline was May 24 with 150-200 submissions expected. He then said that a 40% discount had been obtained from the hotel and that Korean government support was being solicited to subsidize student fees. Kim indicated an expected attendance of 200-250 with projected costs of US$480-500 (excluding IACR membership). Dawson inquired as to the size of the meeting room to which Kim replied that it could hold up to 500 people. Langford asked about electronic registration, and Kim responded that he would work with McCurley to enable electronic registration. ________________________________________________________________________ Eurocrypt 2005 General Chair Damgaard then reported on the status of the conference. He said that finances were under control and that contracts had been signed with the conference center and management company. He projected registration costs of US$525 (excluding IACR membership dues) at the current exchange rate with a break-even threshold set at 330 attendees. He added that an organizing committee had been set and that a preliminary web site had been completed. ________________________________________________________________________ Asiacrypt Steering Committee Chair Dawson then reported that Shanghai had been selected as the venue for Asiacrypt 2006. He said that non-registered attendees had been a problem at some Asiacrypt conferences and noted that two new countries -- Indonesia and Viet Nam -- had joined the Steering Committee. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark and Preneel then turned to the problem of non-paying attendees. Questions were raised about the difficulty that IACR membership dues presented to some potential registrants and the possibility of a "lectures only" registration category. Clark asked if guidance could be provided to General Chairs and wondered about recommending the seeking of sponsorships. A discussion then ensued about possible guidelines and ways to encourage registration without creating undue burden. ________________________________________________________________________ The Board then recessed for lunch at 12:39. The Board reconvened at 14:21. ________________________________________________________________________ Cachin gave his proxy to Lenstra and departed. Camenisch gave his proxy to Langford and departed. ________________________________________________________________________ Preneel then presented the proposal for FSE 2005 as prepared by the FSE Steering Committee. He said that the workshop would be held in Paris using university facilities. He then said that the dates could not yet be finalized and that a break-even point had been set at 60 attendees. ************************************************************************ The Board then voted 15-0 to accept the proposal to hold FSE 2005 in Paris. ************************************************************************ Quisquater then presented information on CHES 2005 from the CHES Steering Committee. He said that locations were being explored with Edinburgh as a possible venue and that a formal proposal would be presented at Crypto. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark reported that a proposal for PKC 2006 would also be presented at Crypto. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then asked that the Board formalize the plan for Eurocrypt 2006. ************************************************************************ The Board then voted 15-0 with 1 abstention to accept the proposal to hold Eurocrypt 2006 in St. Petersburg, Russia with Anatoly Lebedev as General Chair. ************************************************************************ Preneel then reported on preliminary planning for Eurocrypt 2007. He said that proposals were being received for Mikonos, Greece and by Malaga, Spain. ________________________________________________________________________ The Board then updated IACR service lists. ________________________________________________________________________ The Board then discussed Program Chair candidates for Eurocrypt 2006. ************************************************************************ The Board voted to ask Serge Vaudenay to serve as Eurocrypt 2006 Program Chair [Vaudenay subsequently accepted]. ************************************************************************ Clark then raised the issue of conferences and workshops held "in cooperation with the IACR". He noted that no meetings had been granted this status recently but that the IEEE Conference on Security and Privacy (Oakland Conference) had held this status for many years and still held it. Berson then proposed that guidelines be established for granting of "in cooperation with" status. Clark announced that he had granted this status to the forthcoming Conference on Email and Anti-Spam. Dawson suggested that meetings granted this status should avoid time conflicts with major IACR conferences. Preneel suggested that other meetings should be sought to accept this status. Haber thanked Clark and Berson for there efforts at re-establishing this status. ________________________________________________________________________ Junji Shikata (on behalf of Matsumoto) then presented a proposal for cooperation between the IACR and the IEEE Information Theory Society. The proposal suggested joint conferences, liaison officers, sharing of the ePrint Archive, mutual discounts, and a special issue of IEEE Transactions of Information Theory devoted to joint work. Clark committed to contacting Hideki Imai, the president of the IEEE Information Theory Society, to offer "in cooperation with" status and discuss liaison officers. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then asked for nominations for the IACR Distinguished Lecturer. ________________________________________________________________________ Preneel then raised the issue of parallel submissions of essentially identical papers to multiple conferences. He said that this is a growing problem which is difficult to detect with blind submissions and rules restricting the exchanging of information between Program Committees. Clark suggested more explicit wording in Calls for Papers and asked for suggestions. McCurley suggested better sharing of submission information between Program Committees and, if needed, changing Calls for Papers to explicitly allow such sharing. Berson suggested including a statement that "violators of this policy should have no expectation of anonymity." Clark questioned whether a formal protocol is necessary at this time. Dawson suggested adding a sentence to Calls for Papers to explicitly allowing sharing of information across Program Committees. Clark suggested the wording "IACR reserves the right to share information about submissions with other Program Committees." Knudsen said that he would make suitable updates to the Program Chair Guidelines. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then thanked Preneel and Cachin for their work in updating the CD of past IACR proceedings. Preneel noted that there is still no CD for early Asiacrypts, early FSE workshops, and early PKC workshops, and he asked if a CD could be produced to fill this gap. Clark committed to discussing this with Springer-Verlag. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then brought forward a proposal from Serge Vaudenay to establish a best paper award for IACR conferences. Hughes noted that the first paper is generally that which was regarded as the best. McCurley said that he now supports such awards since they have become common elsewhere. Berson offered the opinion that this should be done if it helps members receive appropriate credit for their work. ************************************************************************ The Board then voted 13-0 with 4 abstentions to encourage its conference and workshop Program Committees to select one or more papers for a best paper award. ************************************************************************ McCurley then suggested that process is important in this respect. Clark added that authors should be notified and announcements made at conference and workshop openings. ________________________________________________________________________ Clark then asked for other business. Hughes asked about the rate that students should be charged for conference registration and was told that this rate has traditionally been half the standard registration fee. ________________________________________________________________________ An agenda for the Membership Meeting was then prepared. This included the usual preamble, identification of members of the Board, information about IACR membership, information about 2004 IACR elections, a finance report, a report on forthcoming IACR conferences and workshops, a report on the Journal of Cryptology, discussion of current issues, information about the CD of recent IACR conferences and workshops, description of "in cooperation with" status, information about electronic registration, a reminder that conference proposals should be decoupled from Program Chair suggestions, and announcement of the suggestion to establish "best paper" awards. ________________________________________________________________________ The meeting adjourned at 16:26. ________________________________________________________________________ Respectfully submitted Josh Benaloh IACR Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ Attachments ________________________________________________________________________ Eurocrypt 2005 status report Ivan Damgaard Eurocrypt 2005 General Chair 21-APR-2004 Dear Board of Directors, Various things on Eurocrypt 05 for your information (I do plan to attend the board meeting, but maybe this can save a little time at the meeting): The budget is essentially unchanged since the last version I sent to Andy and Susan, in particular we have dropped the lunch on the last day, as suggested. I enclose a copy. There are all sorts of ways to play with the break-even point, as a function of the registration fee and what we think the euro/dollar exchange rate is going to be. For instance, at the current exchange rate we can have a registration fee of 525$ and break even at 330 participants. This doesn't look as good as when we did the first budget, but this is due only to the drop in the dollar exchange rate. If the dollar would go back to its level before the big drop, 485$ would be a reasonable registration fee. The sponsorships in the budget are essentially already secured, and we are still working on this, so things may improve later. To Andy, who asked about VAT: we will be considered a non-profit event, and so we do not have to pay VAT on top of the prices we charge. On the other hand, we cannot get refund for VAT on the expenses we have. This is all reflected in the current budget. Also to Andy about insurance: I asked around and it seems that virtually no one buys insurance for conferences held in Denmark. I have therefore not done anything further on this, but I'm happy to listen to advice. We will set up a preliminary web page next week. It will be called www.brics.dk/eurocrypt05/ I'll let you know when it's up. Ronald tells me that the PC is complete except perhaps for 1-2 members. That's all for now, see you in Interlaken! regards, Ivan ________________________________________________________________________ IACR Financial Report Susan Langford IACR Treasurer 30-APR-2004 Treasurer's Report for calendar year 2003 As of December 31, 2003, the IACR had $206,000 held in certificates of deposit, approximately $357,000 held in the main IACR and Crypto checking accounts, and approximately 25,000 at UCSB. Of these amounts about $71,000 were due from 2003 expenses and $150,000 is already set aside for specific expenditures in 2003, leaving about $367,000 as the true surplus. 2003 Conferences Total Income Membership Secretariat Surplus Eurocrypt $170,000 $16,000 $3000 -$39,500 Crypto $323,000 $25,000 $11,000 $42,000 Asiacrypt $74,000 $8,000 $1500 -$1,500 The Crypto income does not include on campus housing. The IACR ran a web registration trial for Eurocrypt 2004. We have opened a merchant account, and have processed transactions. As of 4/29, we have settled 8 transactions for a total of $6822. Susan Langford IACR Treasurer ________________________________________________________________________