International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Videos from Crypto 2012 are now online at YouTube and cryptodb.

There is now a BibTeX file available that contains all IACR publications in cryptodb.

The IACR Board is seeking volunteers to assist with the maintenance of the IACR website and to serve as general chair for a future Crypto. If you are interested in these tasks, send a message to president@iacr.org.

The IACR fellows of 2012 have been selected:

• Mihir Bellare
• Eli Biham
• Manuel Blum
• Andrew Odlyzko
• Phil Rogaway
• Claus Schnorr
• Jennifer Seberry

The IACR fellow programme was started in 2002. Within this programme, we 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

Minutes for the Eurocrypt 2011 and Crypto 2011 meetings of the IACR Board of Directors, as well as minutes and slides of the corresponding membership meetings, are now available online.

The number of publication at IACR conferences hardly changed over the last 15 years. At the same time, the number of submissions increased by nearly 60% while the quality of submissions stayed the same - at least according to members of the programme committees. To worsen things, the IACR community has grown and there are many more researchers active in our domain than used to be 15 years ago.
Detailed statistics on submissions and acceptance rates: http://www2.mat.dtu.dk/people/Lars.R.Knudsen/accrates.html

To better serve our community, the Board of Directors expressed its with that Conference Programme Chairs (for Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt) to accept substancially more papers then used to be the case and to work with their General Chair for the logistics to make this possible (using extra slots, shorter talks, and parallel sessions).

CryptoDB has been updated with best paper awards, coauthor relationships, and DOIs.

The IACR website has a new look. A team of cryptologists has recently started an effort to advance the online services of the IACR, and has formed a new online content team for this task. What you see today is the result of the first two months of steady improvements. We hope that you like it and that you find the new organization useful.

This is only a start, and we know that many things are not yet as integrated as we would wish. We are working on improving the site and you should visit http://www.iacr.org often to see further improvements.

Please send your feedback, praise, or bug reports to webbugs(at)iacr.org.

The online content core team:
Christian Cachin, Kevin McCurley, Nigel Smart, Christopher Wolf.

The online content extended team:
Shai Halevi, Hilarie Orman, Bart Preneel, abhi shelat.

Steven Galbraith took the lead in compiling a list of all invited speakers at IACR conferences. Could you please help in contributing your knowledge in the area? The more complete the list is, the more useful it will become!

Some videos of IACR lectures have been posted on youtube in the IACR channel at http://www.youtube.com/TheIACR Videos of talks are also being incorporated into cryptodb - see the example of Roger Dingledine's talk at Crypto 2011.

Videos are now available for Crypto 2011 and PKC 2010, Videos are also available from the Crypto 2011 rump session.

The current version of the newsletter is available. It has been sent out 25 November 2011 to all members.

Eli Biham will hold the IACR Distinguished Lecture 2013 at Eurocrypt in Athens, Greece. Title and abstract will be posted on the IACR web site close in time to the talk.

Dan Boneh will hold the IACR Distinguished Lecture 2012 at Asiacrypt in Beijing, China. Title and abstract will be posted on the IACR web site close in time to the talk.

The distinguished lectures of Gus Simmons (1994) and Ron Rivest (2011) are now online on the IACR web page. You also find slides, abstracts or notes of other, previously held lectures there.

We have been witnessing the dramatic consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan of March 11; we are devastated about the loss of lives and homes. We sincerely hope that the Japanese members of the IACR, their relatives, friends, and colleagues will manage to cope with this disaster, and we wish them a lot of courage and strength. Our thoughts are with all of you.

The IACR board and the CHES steering committee are in close contact with the organizers of CHES 2011, which has been rescheduled for September 28-October 1 in Nara. We are all strongly committed to make CHES 2011 a success.

The membership meeting at Crypto 2011 has dealt with the following questions:

• About IACR & Your Board
• Membership & Elections
• Conferences & Workshops
• IACR Fellows
• Publications
• Current Board Activities

The full set of slides (PDF, 60 MB) is available via http://www.iacr.org/news/files/2011-08-IACR_Membership_Meeting_CryptoColour.pdf

The latest entries at the IACR Archive are

• Theory of Cryptography 2008
• Fast Software Encryption 2008
• Public Key Cryptography 2008
• Eurocrypt 2008
• Crypto 2008
• Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES) 2008
• Asiacrypt 2008
• Theory of Cryptography 2009
• Fast Software Encryption 2009
• EUROCRYPT 2009
• Public Key Cryptography 2009

You can access all the articles of all these workshops and conferences in full text and without charge at the IACR Archive.

The One-Time Pad is the first perfectly secure cipher. Its invention is usually credited to Gilbert S. Vernam and Joseph O. Mauborgne. Prof. Steven M. Bellovin from the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University shows that it was known approx. 35 years earlier to a Sacramento banker named Frank Miller. He also published his scheme in the book Telegraphic Code to Insure Privacy and Secrecy in the Transmission of Telegrams. Steven Bellovin rediscovered this book in the Library of Congress. He has published his findings in Steven M. Bellovin: 'Frank Miller: Inventor of the One-Time Pad', Cryptologia, Volume 35, Issue 3, pages 203-222, July 2011.

• Research Manuscript: https://mice.cs.columbia.edu/getTechreport.php?techreportID=1460
• Cryptologia article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2011.583711
• Article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/science/26code.html