International Association
for Cryptologic Research

NIST is considering the standardization of threshold schemes for cryptographic primitives. Your feedback and participation is welcome. Below are some useful links and dates:

• Draft NIST report (NISTIR 8214) on threshold schemes for cryptographic primitives --- public comments period till October 22, 2018.
• NIST Threshold Cryptography Workshop will take place March 11-12, 2019. The submission deadline is December 17, 2018.
• Project webpage: https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/threshold-cryptography
• Mailing list (public forum): https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Threshold-Cryptography/Collaboration

For questions or comments, contact threshold-crypto (at) nist.gov

Videos from talks at Crypto 2018 are now available on the IACR Youtube Channel. This includes the rump session and the affiliated workshop titled "Beyond Crypto: A TCS Perspective". See https://youtube.com/TheIACR

Dear IACR members,

This year holds again great promise for cryptology research with the ongoing interest in blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. As a sign of this, the word "crypto" has received a new interpretation in newspapers, by the public, and by your favorite search engine: Crypto no longer stands first for the conference that we have held in Santa Barbara since 1981.

This message contains information about recent some developments in IACR. The Board of Directors held a virtual meeting back in March (using Zoom teleconference!) and an in-person meeting at Eurocrypt in Tel-Aviv.

Crypto 2018

The Crypto 2018 conference will accommodate seven "workshops" or affiliated events, taking place from Friday to Sunday before the main conference. Registrations are flowing in at a steady pace. Together with the general chair Tal Rabin, I urge you to register and book your trips early.

https://crypto.iacr.org/2018/

The cutoff date for discounted early registration is July 5th!

Task force on diversity

The IACR has established a task force on diversity, whose goal is to:
a) support women attending IACR events;
b) promote and support IACR and other events that advance diversity (defined broadly);
c) improve diversity, especially representation of women and people from Asia, within IACR governance.

This is a community effort. Tal Rabin and Douglas Stebila are leading the task force and are looking forward to receiving your help, suggestions, and comments.

Code of Conduct for IACR events

The IACR has adopted a code of conduct for its conferences. All events of the IACR must refer to this code of conduct, which starts as follows:

The IACR is committed to providing an experience free of harassment and discrimination in its events, respecting the dignity of every participant. Participants who violate this code may be sanctioned and/or expelled from the event, at the discretion of the General Chair(s). Serious incidents may be referred to the IACR Ethics Committee for further possible action.

You can find the full text in the General Chair guidelines, section 8.10, on the website under:

https://www.iacr.org/docs/minutes/

For supporting this on behalf of the Board, the role of a Code-of-Conduct Liaison has been created. This is a person participating as observer in the Board. The Board has appointed Tal Rabin to this role.

IACR Schools in Cryptology

Cryptology Schools typically provide multiple days of intensive learning and constitute an efficient way to provide high-quality training for graduate students, as well as for professionals. The IACR sponsors such schools with financial contributions. The next schools in 2018 are:

Symmetric Proof Techniques
July 29-August 3, 2018, Bertinoro, Italy.
https://spotniq.school/


School on Modern Cryptography
July 30-August 3, 2018, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
http://www.dc.uba.ar/events/eci/2018/cursos

If you are interested to organize an IACR Cryptology School, please apply by June 30. More information is available on the website at https://iacr.org/schools/

To find out more about your IACR and the discussions of the Board of Directors, read the minutes of meeting at https://www.iacr.org/docs/minutes/

Best regards,

Christian Cachin
IACR President

Dear IACR members,

Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone for 2018! Here is an update on recent developments in the IACR.

To start out with some statistics, currently the IACR has 1500 members for 2018. All 2017 IACR conferences together counted almost 1900 attendees in total and published 359 papers. As you can read next, these numbers will grow in the future.

RWC 2018:

One important development for the IACR in 2017 was the establishment of the IACR Symposium on Real World Crypto (RWC), by joining forces with the former Real-World Crypto conference. According to the traditional schedule of RWC this event will now open IACR's calendar year. I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the first IACR-RWC, which takes place in Zurich on January 10-12. RWC 2018 has been completely booked out for weeks already, we expect 600 attendees. This is the largest number of registrations for an IACR event ever.

Elections:

The Board's composition changes for 2018, following the recent election: Josh Benaloh leaves and Tancrède Lepoint joins.

Let me take this occasion to thank Josh for his outstanding and long-lasting service to the IACR, with roles as secretary, Crypto general chair, the Board's program-chair contact and more. I could trace it back to him serving as secretary starting 1999. He pushed hard to make IACR actually use the cryptographic protocols he was interested in, and he succeeded when IACR adopted Helios online voting for elections. As president I was always glad to count on his deep understanding of votes and elections.

In the regular schedule General Chairs Steve Myers and S.M. Yiu will leave, Marc Fischlin, Muthu V., and Mitsuru Matsui join in 2018. I would like to thank all General Chairs of the 2017 conferences and their teams for their tremendous work.

Minutes from meetings of the Board of Directors:

As always you can find information from IACR Board of Directors in the minutes of the meetings available online (https://iacr.org/docs/minutes/minutes.html). Please take a look to understand the current projects and challenges of IACR.

Policy on Conflicts of Interest:

The IACR Board of Directors has recently finalized a formal Policy on Conflicts of Interest. This was discussed already at Eurocrypt, Crypto and Asiacrypt. You can find the text online under https://iacr.org/docs/.

To cite from the document: In particular, the authors of each submission are asked during the submission process to identify all members of the Program Committee who have an automatic conflict of interest (COI) with the submission. A reviewer and an author have an automatic COI if one was the thesis advisor/supervisor to the other, or if they've shared an institutional affiliation within the last two years, or if they've published two or more joint authored works within the last three years, or if they are in the same family. Any further COIs of importance should be separately disclosed. It is the responsibility of all authors to ensure correct reporting of COI information. Submissions with incorrect or incomplete COI information may be rejected without consideration of their merits.

Best regards,
Christian Cachin
IACR President

The O*NET Data Collection Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration (https://www.doleta.gov/programs/onet/), is seeking the input of expert Mathematicians and Cryptographers. As the nation’s most comprehensive source of occupational data, O*NET is a free resource for millions of job seekers, employers, veterans, educators, and students at www.onetonline.org. O*NET particularly needs input from Cryptographers.

You have the opportunity to participate in this important initiative as it will help ensure that the complexities of your profession are described accurately in the O*NET Database for the American public for career exploration and job analysis.

Mathematicians

Description: Conduct research in fundamental mathematics or in application of mathematical techniques to science, management, and other fields. Solve problems in various fields using mathematical methods.

You are considered an Occupation Expert if you meet the following criteria:

• At least 5 years of experience with the occupation. Includes those who are now supervising, teaching, or training IF you have at least one year of practice during your career.
• Currently active in the occupation (practicing, supervising, teaching and/or training) and based in the U.S.

If you meet these criteria and are interested in participating as an occupation expert, please email or call Tammy Belcher at the O*NET Operations Center at RTI International (the O*NET data collection contractor) 877-233-7348 ext. 119 or tbelcher@onet.rti.org and provide the following:

• Name/ # years of experience
• Address with city and state
• Daytime phone number
• Email address
• Do you have at least one year of practice in the occupation and are you still active?

Process and Participation Incentive: A random sample of experts responding to this request will be invited to complete a set of questionnaires (paper or online versions available). $40.00 in cash and a certificate of appreciation from the U.S. Department of Labor will be included with the questionnaires.

We encourage you to consider helping to keep information about your profession accurate and current for the benefit of our colleagues and the nation. Thank you very much for your support.

(Dr. Laurie Cluff of RTI, International is leading this program of data collection from occupation experts. If you have questions or concerns, she may be reached by phone, at (919) 541-6514, or by e-mail, at lcluff@rti.org. Thank you for your time and consideration.)

Statement from the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR)
Condemning the U.S. President’s 2017-01-27 Executive Order Barring Entry into the U.S. of Citizens from Seven Muslim-Majority Countries

Approved by the IACR board of directors, January 29, 2017

The International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) is the scientific organization dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of cryptology worldwide. Our members contribute to the advance of critical information security techniques. These work toward making the Internet safe, protecting e-commerce, securing computer storage, and enabling the safe use of mobile phones. Members of the IACR, who come from around the world, developed many of the cryptographic methods that have been standardized by the USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and which are in use worldwide, such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

The IACR strongly opposes U.S. President Donald Trump’s Executive Order suspending visas to nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries. We declare such actions, which hurt international collaboration, to pose a concrete and direct threat to our mission, and to the continued international contributions of our members to society, industry, and government.

The open exchange of ideas is essential to the work the IACR does, and to the advance of scientific knowledge and technology more broadly. The open exchange of ideas requires freedom of movement — as when non-U.S. citizens attend IACR-sponsored conferences held in the USA, a completely routine activity.

All individuals are entitled to participate in IACR conferences, regardless of their country of origin. Barring citizens of out-of-favor countries from entering the United States sunders basic scientific and community norms. These norms were strained even before the executive action, with many scholars facing untoward barriers to getting U.S. visas.

The United States itself benefits from participation in the international academic community, as when international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars study at U.S. universities, and when non-U.S. professors visit the U.S. to collaborate on research or share their knowledge. Our community’s work, which often involves teams from many countries, directly contributes to the successful efforts of U.S. industry.

Running an international scientific society that contributes to innovations in science and technology is not easy. The implications of this executive order are unpredictable. In response to it, other nations may take similar actions, making it impossible for U.S. scientists to attend conferences in other countries.

In the end, this unhelpful and destructive executive order only hurts the United States. The IACR calls for it to be immediately rescinded.

Dear IACR members,

As a turbulent 2016 nears its end, I would like to give you an update of current IACR activities.

First, let me thank all organizers of the eight (!) IACR conferences in 2016. They are all volunteers and take up the tremendous work of creating an event with 100s of participants and a program selected from 100s of submissions. All conferences ran smoothly and left lasting impressions.

The most recent conference I attended was Asiacrypt in Hanoi, with 2^8 participants and the first cryptology conference of IACR in Vietnam. Asiacrypt has been organized by IACR since 2000; the earlier Asiacrypt/Auscrypt conferences were predecessors to the ownership by IACR. However, Vietnamese cryptanalysts discovered in the logo of Asiacrypt 2016 that the IACR has always been part of AsIACRypt.

After the 2016 election, the Board of Directors will see a couple of new faces for 2017 onward: Welcome, Francois-Xavier Standaert and Joppe Bos; and welcome again Shai Halevi and Brian LaMacchia! In their roles as General Chairs of 2018 conferences, also Orr Dunkelman (Eurocrypt), Tal Rabin (Crypto), and Josef Pieprzyk (Asiacrypt) will join the Board. And Kenny Paterson takes over from Ivan Damgaard as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cryptology.

At the same time, let me thank the leaving Board members for their longstanding service to the IACR: Nigel Smart, Martijn Stam, Christof Paar, and David Pointcheval have contributed to the organization for several decades taken together. They will enjoy future events with less responsibilities.

One important development in 2016 has been the creation of the IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology (ToSC). ToSC is published as gold open access and freely available, published in electronic form by the Ruhr University of Bochum, with Gregor Leander as Managing Editor. ToSC is now available at http://tosc.iacr.org. (Sorry, HTTPS-everywhere enthusiasts, we only have HTTP for this at the moment.) The FSE conference and ToSC operate as a journal/conference hybrid and papers published in ToSC are presented at FSE.

The dates and details of IACR's future events appear on the website as they become available. The minutes of the Board meetings and the summary presentations that I give at each Asia/Euro/Crypto conference are available on the website as well, under About > Documents.

I wish you all the best for 2017 and am looking forward to seeing many of you at the next conferences!

Christian Cachin
IACR President

Greetings from the IACR! It is now a few days since Crypto 2016 wrapped up. For those of you who weren't able to make it to the membership meeting, here are some of the important things you missed. You can see IACR President Christian Cachin's complete slides from the membership meeting at https://www.iacr.org/docs/minutes/minutes.html.

2016 IACR Election

The 2016 IACR election is being held to fill all four IACR Officer positions (president, vice president, treasurer, secretary) and three of nine IACR Director positions. Nominations are due by September 24, 2016. Information about the vacant positions and a nomination form can be found at https://www.iacr.org/elections/2016/.

2018 IACR Distinguished Lecture

The board has selected Mitsuru Matsui to give the 2018 IACR Distinguished Lecture. The lecture will be delivered at Asiacrypt 2018 (December) in Brisbane, Australia. Information about the IACR Distinguished Lectures can be found at https://www.iacr.org/publications/dl/.

New Cryptology ePrint Archive editor

Nigel Smart has stepped down as co-editor of ePrint. We thank him for his dedicated service to the community. He is replaced by Tancrède Lepoint, who joins Alexandra Boldyreva as the current ePrint co-editors.

Future Events

Two upcoming IACR events have been recently approved by the board:

• CHES 2017 will be in Taipei, Taiwan (September 26-28). Bo-Yin Yang & Chen-Mou Cheng will be general chairs, while Naofumi Homma & Wieland Fischer will be program co-chairs.
• TCC 2017 will be at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA (November 13-15). Abhishek Jain will be general chair, while Yael Kalai & Leonid Reyzin will be program co-chairs.

Upcoming deadlines:

• August 31 (extended!): Propose an IACR Cryptology School for the next cycle. See http://iacr.org/schools/propose.php.
• September 1: Submit to FSE 2017 / issue 2 of Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology. See http://www.nuee.nagoya-u.ac.jp/labs/tiwata/fse2017/.
• September 2 (extended!): Propose an event to be affiliated with Eurocrypt and EuroS&P in Paris. See https://eurocrypt2017.di.ens.fr/cfw.html.
• September 24: Nominate for the IACR election. See https://www.iacr.org/elections/2016/.
• October 1: Eurocrypt submission deadline. See https://eurocrypt2017.di.ens.fr/cfp.html.
• October 6: PKC submission deadline. See http://www.iacr.org/workshops/pkc2017/cfp.html.

Dear IACR members,

With the annual CRYPTO conference coming up soon, I would like to inform you about some recent developments in the IACR.

Journal of Cryptology - Reviewers of the Year

Ivan Damgaard as the current Editor-in-Chief of the journal has awarded the title of "Reviewer of the Year" at Eurocrypt. He actually designated two colleagues for being his most reliable and helpful reviewers, with the following details:

• Vincent Rijmen, 9/9 accepted invitations, 7 completed on time, 1 late, 1 ongoing
• Jens Groth, 8/8 accepted invitations, 6 completed on time, 1 late, 1 ongoing

Congratulations!

Journal of Cryptology - Kenny Paterson new Editor-in-Chief

Ivan Damgaard is resigning from the position of Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cryptology. On behalf of all IACR members I would like to thank Ivan for his dedication to the journal and for his work with moving to the online submission and reviewing system.

To replace him, the Board has recently appointed Kenny Paterson as Editor in Chief for the Journal of Cryptology, for a 3-year period starting in January 2017. Congratulations!

IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology (ToSC)

Earlier this year the IACR has also decided to change the publication format for the yearly FSE conference to a conference-journal hybrid. The newly established IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology (ToSC) will be a journal with a rapid and strict reviewing schedule.

Publication of a paper in ToSC during the year will give the authors an opportunity to present the result at the next FSE. Publication will be online and all content is available freely (Gold Open-Access). There will be four submission deadlines, four review periods, and four issues yearly.

For more information about ToSC, please visit the temporary website: iacr.org/transactions/tosc/.

IACR Cryptology Schools

The IACR schools program sponsors educational schools aimed at graduate students. The grants allow organizers to invite speakers or pay for fixed costs. Proposals can be submitted by Dec. 31 and by June 30; a description of the schools program appears at iacr.org/schools.

As there were no proposals received by the recent deadline of June 30 this year, we extend this deadline to August 31, 2016. Details about submissions are explained on the website.

Conference locations and appointments

At its meeting during Eurocrypt 2016 in Vienna, the Board has received two very strong proposals for future Eurocrypts. Exceptionally it has decided to fix the location of a Eurocrypt conference three years ahead:

• Eurocrypt 2018, 29 Apr-3 May, Tel Aviv (IL), with Orr Dunkelman as General Chair
• Eurocrypt 2019, Apr/May, Darmstadt (DE), with Marc Fischlin as General Chair

Furthermore, the Board has appointed as Program Co-Chairs:

• Thomas Peyrin as Program Co-Chair of Asiacrypt 2017-18
• Hovav Shacham as Program Co-Chair of CRYPTO 2017-18

Awards for cryptographers

Excellent people from our discipline continue to be recognized by prominent awards, which cover researchers from a much broader domain. After several ACM Turing Awards, the most recent one this year, it is my pleasure to congratulate two colleagues:

• Tal Rabin has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
• Brent Waters has received the 2015 Grace Murray Hopper Award for the introduction and development of the concepts of attribute-based and functional encryption.

Asiacrypt 2016

Last but not least, the planning for this year's Asiacrypt in Hanoi (4-8 Dec) is progressing well. See the website for all further information: www.asiacrypt2016.com.

I am looking forward to seeing many of you in Santa Barbara or in Hanoi.

Best regards,

Christian Cachin
President, IACR

Dear IACR members,

The past year has again seen vibrant research activity in cryptology and many successful IACR events. For example, the IACR Cryptology Schools program has gained momentum with four schools sponsored in 2015. Another significant change was the introduction of parallel sessions at Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt to cope with the increased number of high-quality papers (more on that later). Last but not least, Alexandra Boldyreva has joined as co-editor of the Cryptology ePrint Archive, replacing Tal Rabin.

Board of Directors

As it happens every year, the composition of the Board has changed for 2016. I'd like to thank the leaving Board members, Svetla Petkova-Nikova, Steven Galbraith, Thomas Ristenpart, and Tom Berson, for their contributions to the IACR and to cryptology research.

A very special *thank you* from my side goes to Tom Berson, Fellow of the IACR, former president, secretary and much more: He was among the founding members of this association and has held almost every position since 1983; though his work in building the IACR he helped the individuals in the field make careers in research and technology; his dedication to the organization positioned cryptology to become an independent and vibrant domain today. We are sure he will enjoy board-meeting-free Sundays at the conferences in the future!

Joining the Board are three colleagues: Phil Rogaway has been newly elected to the Board in 2015, Steven Myers and SM Yiu join in their roles as General Chairs of Crypto and Asiacrypt in 2017 -- welcome!

Conference attendance

As many members have asked about attendance at our conferences I am including here the attendee counts at the 2015 events:

Asiacrypt 2015: 200
CHES 2015: 448
Crypto 2015: 322
Eurocrypt 2015: 324
FSE 2015: 136
PKC 2015: 144
TCC 2015: 145


Referendum on parallel sessions and bylaws modifications

The Board had suggested for many years that Program Chairs find a way to accommodate the increased number of submitted papers, including organizing parallel sessions. In 2014 the Board asked the Program Chairs of the 2015 general conferences (Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt) directly to introduce parallel sessions in the program. The echo at the conferences was positive. As promised before we will now organize a formal membership vote on the question of continuing with parallel sessions like this.

With the same referendum we also propose to change the bylaws in minor ways. The document currently distinguishes between "IACR conferences" (Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt) and "IACR workshops" (CHES, FSE, PKC, TCC). Since the latter have by far surpassed the common notion of a workshop in scope and attendance, we will rename them to "IACR Area Conferences". Some further small changes are also proposed.

You will receive email form the Helios voting system with your credential to vote. The full text of the referendums appears at iacr.org/elections/2016-vote/announcement.html.

Conferences

The first IACR conference in 2016 has already taken place (TCC 2016-A in Tel Aviv). Our next conferences are:

• Public Key Cryptography, March 6-March 9, 2016, Taipei, Taiwan.
  http://troll.iis.sinica.edu.tw/pkc16/
• Fast Software Encryption, March 20-March 23, 2016, Bochum, Germany.
  http://fse.rub.de/
• Eurocrypt 2016, May 8-May 12, 2016, Vienna, Austria
  http://ist.ac.at/eurocrypt2016/

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the IACR events this year.

Closing

This is *your* IACR: Please share your feedback and suggestions for improving IACR's services. Contact me, other Board members, the conference chairs, and feel free to use other communication channels.

Best regards,

Christian Cachin
President, IACR

Hello IACR members,

We hope this news update finds you well. There are several items of news to report from the world of IACR:

1. IACR Museum of Historic Papers in Cryptology
2. Nominations for 2015 Election
3. Streamlined Access to IACR Publications
4. ia.cr URL Shortener
5. Membership Meetings & Upcoming Events

IACR Museum of Historic Papers in Cryptology

We are pleased to announce a new Museum of Historic Papers in Cryptology. In the past century, the intertwining of cryptology with national security has made it difficult to get access to some original source material from the beginnings of modern cryptology. Beyond that, the fragility of paper and human memory have further obscured the picture. The IACR's Museum of Cryptology will try to fill in some of the gaps by being a repository for older research papers that have not been otherwise published for the public.

The first paper in the museum is Claude Shannon's 1945 report, A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography. It has been re-typeset in LaTeX by IACR fellow Whitfield Diffie, and is available in the museum with permission from Alcatel. We are in the process of adding several more papers in the following months, and welcome further suggestions.

The museum is available at iacr.org/museum/.

Nominations for 2015 Election

The 2015 IACR election is being held to fill 3 of 9 elected IACR Director positions. Nominations for the election are due very soon, September 24! Information about the open positions and the nomination process is available at iacr.org/elections/2015/.

Streamlined Access to IACR Publications

We remind all IACR members that they can access Journal of Cryptology and conference/workshop proceedings volumes for free, as part of the IACR agreement with Springer. In addition, the "IACR version" of many proceedings volumes older than two years are available for free to the general public.

We have created a new centralized portal to access all of these IACR publications. Check it out at iacr.org/publications/access.php. If you use old bookmarks to access the IACR publications, they should automatically redirect to this new portal.

ia.cr URL Shortener

We have recently acquired the ia.cr domain name and are now using it to offer short URLs for all ePrint reports. You will now see a "Short URL" listed among the information for each ePrint report, for example: ia.cr/2005/187. We expect that the time saved from this 41% decrease in characters will significantly advance the state of the art of cryptology in the upcoming years.

Membership Meetings & Upcoming Events

The President's slides from the CRYPTO 2015 membership meeting and the minutes from the Eurocrypt 2015 membership meeting are available at www.iacr.org/docs/minutes/. Highlights from the CRYPTO membership meeting include the announcement of several new events:

• CHES 2016 will take place 16-19 Aug in UCSB.
• Eurocrypt 2017 will take place 15-18 May in Paris.

The following IACR workshop has also very recently been approved by the IACR board:

• TCC 2016-B will take place 1-3 Nov in Beijing.

Because TCC is moving in the calendar, there will be two TCC events in 2016. TCC 2016-A will take place in Tel Aviv in January. For a list of all IACR events, see www.iacr.org/events/.

Thanks for reading! We hope to see you at an IACR event soon,
Mike Rosulek (IACR communications secretary)

Two announcements:

(1) CRYPTO 2015 is less than two weeks away, and the proceedings are now available. Through our arrangement with Springer, IACR members can access the proceedings for free online (http://www.iacr.org/services/springer.php). You will need to login with your IACR membership credentials.

In addition to traditional PDFs, this year Springer is also offering HTML and ePub versions of the proceedings. We hope this improves your experience on a wider variety of devices.

(2) Tal Rabin is stepping down as co-editor of the ePrint Archive after 7.5 years of service. We thank her for her diligent service over a period of time that saw ePrint roughly double in publication volume.

We are also pleased to announce that Alexandra (Sasha) Boldyreva has agreed to take over as the new co-editor of ePrint. Nigel Smart remains as the other co-editor.

Dear IACR members,

The Australian government has recently enacted its Defence Trade Controls Act (DTCA) which places export controls on cryptographic technologies. As it contains no exemption for ordinary research & teaching, the act apparently criminalizes the scholarly activities of our Australian colleagues.

The IACR has drafted a petition in response to this legislation (https://www.iacr.org/petitions/australia-dtca/). If you are an IACR member, we encourage you to add your signature. With enough support, we hope to contribute to an improvement to the situation in Australia.

As this is the first petition hosted by the IACR, we welcome your feedback. Please send comments to petitions@iacr.org.

Registration for CRYPTO 2015 is now open (https://www.iacr.org/conferences/crypto2015/registration.html), which makes it a good time to let you know about a few important updates.

Paper delivery of the Journal of Cryptology is now *opt-in*. If you would like to receive hard-copy JoC editions, you must update your membership info. You can update proactively via the membership info form (https://secure.iacr.org/membership/members/update.html) or when paying your membership dues for 2016 during conference registration. If you have already paid your membership dues for 2016 you can still opt in and pay at a later time.

We have made some changes in how IACR membership records are stored internally. As a result, there is a small chance you will be asked to reset your password when authenticating. You will need access to the email address of record associated with your membership. If you experience problems, please contact the membership secretary at database@iacr.org.

Open Letter to the Hon'ble President of India

The International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) is dismayed by reports of Professor Bimal Roy being dismissed in all but name as Director of the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. Professor Roy has been a driving force in advancing the important field of cryptology in India, elevating its visibility to international level. Cryptology is a prime application of statistical and probabilistic methods.

The IACR confirms that Professor Roy deserves great recognition for his service to India and to the field of cryptology. He devoted his career to strengthening India's standing in this timely, fast advancing field. Removing him from this position one month before the appointment expires is an act that has put India in a shameful and awkward position in front of the international community of cryptology research and of mathematics in general.

The International Association of Cryptologic Research
June 21, 2015

Videos from FSE 2013 are now online.

The IACR has recently started sponsoring select Cryptology Schools. If you would like to propose an IACR-sponsored school that takes place on/before February 2016, then your last chance to submit proposals is June 30. The next round of proposals is not until December 31. More information about the application process can be found at http://www.iacr.org/schools/.

Dear IACR Member,

We are conducting a study on the verifiability aspects of e-voting and specifically the verifiability features of Helios, the system used in IACR elections. It will only take a couple of seconds to complete the survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3C7YCGL

The results and analysis of the survey will be made available to the community. The study is conducted by the U. of Athens Crypto.Sec group http://crypto.di.uoa.gr No personal information of any form is collected in this study.

IACR webmaster

The IACR has selected 6 new members to be recognized as Fellows of the IACR. The 2015 Fellows are (in alphabetical order):

• Ernie Brickell, for founding the Journal of Cryptology, for industrial implementations supporting privacy, and for contributions to secret sharing, attestation, and the cryptanalysis of knapsack-based cryptosystems.
• Joe Kilian, for ingenious contributions to areas including primality testing, secure computation, oblivious transfer, interactive proofs, zero knowledge, and watermarking.
• Kaisa Nyberg, for fundamental contributions to the design and analysis of block ciphers, for contributions to mobile phone security, and for service to the IACR.
• Tatsuaki Okamoto, for theoretical and practical contributions to areas including encryption, signatures, identification, elliptic-curve cryptosystems, zero knowledge, and electronic cash, and for service to the IACR.
• Bart Preneel, for outstanding service to the IACR, for numerous research contributions, for sustained educational leadership, and for effectively leading the European cryptologic research community.
• Tal Rabin, for contributions to the theory of multiparty computation, encryption, and signatures, and for leadership on cryptographic research within industry.

In 2004, the IACR established the IACR Fellows Program to recognize outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions that:

• Advance the science, technology, and practice of cryptology and related fields;
• Promote the free exchange of ideas and information about cryptology and related fields;
• Develop and maintain the professional skill and integrity of individuals in the cryptologic community;
• Advance the standing of the cryptologic community in the wider scientific and technical world and promote fruitful relationships between the IACR and other scientific and technical organizations.

In general, two broad categories of accomplishment will be considered: technical contributions and distinguished service to the cryptologic community. Fellows are expected to be "model citizens" of the cryptologic community, and thus most of them will have demonstrated sustained and significant accomplishment in both categories, but a very small number may be chosen for unique and crucial accomplishment in one category only.

More information about the Fellows program, including the list of all Fellows, can be found at http://iacr.org/fellows/.

Starting this year, the IACR is introducing an annual TCC Test-of-Time (ToT) award. The award recognizes outstanding papers, published in TCC at least eight years ago, making a significant contribution to the theory of cryptography, preferably with influence also in other area of cryptography, theory, and beyond. The inaugural 2015 TCC ToT award was announced this week at the TCC business meeting in Warsaw. The winners are Silvio Micali and Leonid Reyzin, for their paper "Physically Observable Cryptography" from TCC 2004. The award committee recognized Micali and Reyzin "for pioneering a mathematical foundation of cryptography in the presence of information leakage in physical systems."

For more information about the new Test-of-Time award, including information on nominating a paper, please see the page at http://www.iacr.org/workshops/tcc/awards.html.