International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Professor Michael O. Rabin passed at the age of 94.

Professor Rabin was a towering figure in mathematics and one of the founding pioneers of modern cryptography. His work introduced and shaped many of the field’s most fundamental ideas, from primality testing and digital signatures to encryption, oblivious transfer, and cut-and-choose techniques, among many others. Beyond cryptography, his contributions to mathematics and computer science were profound and far-reaching. In particular, he was instrumental in developing foundational concepts such as nondeterminism, polynomial-time computation, and randomized algorithms.

Professor Rabin held distinguished appointments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University where he was an admired teacher and educator. He was the recipient of numerous honors, including the Turing Award.

In 2025 we conducted a survey on publication strategy and conference experience. A report of the results is now publicly available at IACR survey results.

The report shows the tally of responses for each question, as well as some qualitative analyses of the received comments and some demographic breakdowns for additional context. While there is a wide diversity of views amongst respondents, there are some areas where a strong majority supports some form of change to our status quo. Over the coming months, the board will be fleshing out more concrete proposals for implementing such changes, and will be presenting them to the membership for feedback.

We need to perform some maintenance on submit.iacr.org. It will be down from 3pm-5pm UTC on Sunday August 3. Since apologies for the late notice, but it's difficult to find a time to update this and it's long overdue.

After the successful launch of the IACR Communications in Cryptology in 2024, the Editors-in-Chief are looking for new Editorial Board members for the 4 issues in 2025.

Please use this form for (self-) nomination: https://forms.gle/myrGvP1FFdk1p6pU9

The PC chairs of Crypto 2025 are soliciting nominations (including self-nominations) for program committee service. The bulk of the work will take place from mid-February to the first week of May. Each PC member will be expected to review approximately 15 papers.

Please submit nominations via this form: https://forms.gle/8ufq56Q3TujGc3oN6

We are proud to announce the winners of the 2024 IACR Test-of-Time Award for Eurocrypt. The IACR Test-of-Time Award honors papers published at the 3 IACR flagship conferences 15 years ago which have had a lasting impact on the field. We are announcing the winners for each conference separately.

The Test-of-Time award for Eurocrypt 2009 is awarded to the following paper:

A Unified Framework for the Analysis of Side-Channel Key Recovery Attacks, by François-Xavier Standaert, Tal G. Malkin and Moti Yung.
For introducing a structured approach for evaluation of side-channel attacks and countermeasures and for inspiring further connections between the theory of leakage-resilient cryptography and the practice of defending implementations against side-channels attacks.

For more information, see https://www.iacr.org/testoftime.

Congratulations to the winners!

https://www.iacr.org/petitions/gaza_war.html

You can now submit your papers to the very first edition of the IACR Communications in Cryptology.

Submission deadline: Jan 8, 2024 at 11:59pm Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

The IACR strongly condemns the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israel. We are outraged and horrified by this dreadful assault on civilians: Israelis of all religions, ages, and backgrounds; tourists; and foreign workers. We stand in solidarity with the people of Israel.

Our heartfelt sympathy and support go out to our members everywhere who are affected by that attack, and to all those who are suffering its ongoing consequences.

Approved by the IACR board of directors, October 18, 2023

As an experiment to manage the problem of growing program committee sizes, the PC chairs of Crypto 2024 are soliciting nominations (including self-nominations) for program committee service. The bulk of the work will take place from mid-February to the first week of May. Each PC member will be expected to review approximately 15 papers.

Please submit nominations via this form by July 31: https://forms.gle/wwvx4SkAoooX5SEA9

During CRYPTO’22 in Santa Barbara, a Women in Cryptography Networking Reception was successfully held. The attendees discussed several gender-related points they would like to be addressed by the IACR community. A resume (in bullet form) can be found here (https://hackmd.io/@RUWdi86MSmCiqoMLxEzsKQ/S11cD-U1i).

As a result of this, a discord “Women in Cryptography” and a website (https://www.womenincryptography.com/) have been created.

We invite all people who identify as women to join the discord and the ongoing discussions there. To join, please send email with the subject line “Request to join WIC discord” to [email protected]

NIST has published NISTIR 8214C ipd: NIST First Call for Multi-Party Threshold Schemes (Initial Public Draft). The call has two categories: cat1, for NIST-specified primitives; and cat2, for primitives not specified by NIST.

The period of public comments is open till April 10, 2023. The participation of the cryptology community is essential for the success of this initiative.

Details here: https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8214c/draft

Consider also joining the MPTC forum: https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/threshold-cryptography/email-list

IACR Statement Condemning the Russian war in Ukraine
April 6, 2022

Statement from the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) Condemning the Russian war in Ukraine

The IACR strongly condemns the unprovoked and unjust war that Russia is waging in Ukraine. We are outraged by the suffering and loss of life that this brutal aggression is inflicting on the Ukrainian People.

While this war continues, the IACR will not hold or plan to hold any conference in Russia, nor will it be affiliated with conferences in Russia.

The IACR fully endorses the following joint statement by the National Academies of G7 States which was published on 2 March 2022:

"The unprovoked attack against Ukraine, a democratic and independent country, is a blatant violation of international law and of core values of humanity. The Russian invasion is an assault on the fundamental principles of freedom, democracy and self-determination, which provide the basis for academic freedom and opportunities for scientific exchange and cooperation.

In this dark hour, our thoughts and deepest sympathy are with the people of Ukraine. We are determined to support the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. We stand in solidarity with the scientific community and the scientists in Ukraine.

We acknowledge the Russian scientists and citizens who are ashamed of this attack and speak out against the war.

We call on the Russian leadership to immediately cease all military action against Ukraine and put an end to this war."

Approved by the IACR board of directors, April 6, 2022

Algorand Foundation invites proposals for the Algorand Centres of Excellence (ACE) programme to build and run multidisciplinary centers which advance research and support applied education in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space.

Proposals for three to five years are accepted from higher education institutions and non-profit research organizations anywhere in the world. The ACE programme is being launched with a budget of 100,000,000 ALGO for the next ten years.

See the ACE website for further details.