International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

IACR News

Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:

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19 May 2020

Announcement Announcement
PKC 2020 has been converted to a virtual conference this year, to be held June 1-4. The program is now live and registration is open. Chat will go live on Saturday, May 20. The only fees being collected are for the IACR membership, so if you already attended RWC or Eurocrypt this year, then you can register for free.
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24 April 2020

Dates: 11-15 May 2020
Announcement Announcement

The website for Eurocrypt 2020 has been revised with information about the upcoming virtual conference on May 11-15. Registration is now open, and further details will appear in the days to come.

This will be the first virtual conference by IACR, and the only cost for attendees will be the IACR membership fee if you haven't already paid it yet this year.

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14 March 2020

Announcement Announcement
Dear IACR member,

Recent developments related to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and the increasing number of travel restrictions that have been put in place have forced us to make the following decisions regarding the schedule of forthcoming IACR conferences:
  • FSE 2020, which was supposed to be held in Athens, Greece, during 22-26 March 2020, has been postponed to 8-12 November 2020;
  • PKC 2020, which was supposed to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, during 4-7 May 2020, has been postponed; and
  • EUROCRYPT 2020, which was supposed to be held in Zagreb, Croatia, during 10-14 May 2020, has been postponed.
We are currently considering several rescheduling options for EUROCRYPT 2020 and PKC 2020 and we will be informing the membership and attendees about these changes as soon as possible via the IACR news system and other appropriate communication channels.

The publication schedule of these conferences has not been altered and authors will have the option to record a presentation that would go online on the website of these conferences. Registered attendees have been offered either a full refund or the option to transfer the registration fee to the postponed version.

No changes have been made at this time to the schedule of CRYPTO 2020, CHES 2020, TCC 2020, and ASIACRYPT 2020, but we will continue to closely monitor the situation and will inform members if changes are needed.
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01 March 2020

Announcement Announcement
Dear IACR member,

The IACR board is currently monitoring the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and assessing its potential impact on forthcoming IACR conferences. Although the current conference schedule has not changed, we are in close contact with the conference organizers and constantly reevaluating the situation. In case a conference needs to be postponed, relocated, cancelled, or switched to a web-only format, we will be informing the membership and attendees as soon as possible via the IACR news system and other appropriate communication channels. Publication schedules will not be altered significantly even if conferences are affected.

In the meantime, we are in the process of implementing several measures to ease the burden on attendees who cannot physically attend the conference due to travel restrictions or concerns related to the novel coronavirus outbreak. These include:
  • having a more flexible cancellation and refund policy; and
  • allowing alternative methods of presentation, such as pre-recorded videos.
In order to guarantee the safety of conference attendees, we are also asking our conference organizers to follow the safety guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) and national health protection agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and to ensure attendees are aware of these guidelines. In addition, we also plan to have a point of contact for each conference to address concerns by attendees.

Links:
WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
IACR News: https://www.iacr.org/news/
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18 February 2020


24 July 2019

Announcement Announcement
Registration is now open for Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC) 2019, which is held in cooperation with the IACR. SAC 2019 will be held August 14-16, 2019, at the University of Waterloo near Toronto, Canada, preceded by the SAC Summer School August 12-13. Invited speakers include Craig Costello, Tetsu Iwata, Seny Kamara, Nele Mentens, and Doug Stinson.

The program will include sessions on design and analysis of symmetric key primitives, efficient implementations, mathematical cryptology, real-world cryptography, and post-quantum crypto. Details and program at https://uwaterloo.ca/sac-2019.

Some stipends available to help support attendance of students and early career researchers.
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19 July 2019

Announcement Announcement
Dear IACR members,

In-between a memorable Eurocrypt in Darmstadt and an exciting Crypto coming up in August, let me share some recent developments in the IACR.

Cryptology ePrint Archive

After four years of serving as one of two editors, Alexandra Boldyreva has stepped down. Approving the eprints according to minimal acceptance criteria is an important task that benefits everyone in the field. Speaking for IACR, I thank her for all the work with this and wish her a well-deserved break from the flood of submissions.

The Board has appointed Joppe Bos to new co-editor; he shares this position with Tancrède Lepoint.

Communications Secretary

A second change has taken place with the responsible for communications: Mike Rosulek has driven publicity for IACR during the last five years. On behalf of the organization, I thank him for all his efforts, his diligence, and many late-night shifts.

The Board has appointed Foteini Baldimtsi as new Communications Secretary; she oversees a growing team of multiple people who operate the online and communication services. Welcome to the Board!

Eurocrypt 2021 in Norway and Asiacrypt 2021 in Singapore

Eurocrypt will return to Norway in 2021 (after 1993 in Lofthus) and take place Trondheim, with Colin Boyd serving as General Chair. For Asiacrypt 2021 the IACR has selected a proposal from Singapore, organized by Guo Jian of the Nanyang Technological University.

We thank them and all other conference organizers for creating the leading conferences in the field. It is a multi-year effort to organize an event attended by several hundred people and means a great investment of time and energy. But organizing an event also provides the rewarding opportunity to leave lasting memories with all attendees. Bringing together everyone, including newcomers, students, senior researchers and everyone else with a common interest in cryptologic research, is an important aspect that goes beyond the scientific progress. In this sense I invite everyone who is in a position to do so, to think about contributing to IACR and potentially organize a future event -- just approach any Board member with your ideas.

The Board has discussed many further topics at the recent Eurocrypt meeting and also earlier at virtual meetings; you can find the meeting minutes online at https://www.iacr.org/docs/minutes/

Website renewal

A few days ago the web team has upgraded the IACR website with a completely new, responsive design. I invite you to check it out at https://iacr.org/. The new implementation renders the content nicely on any platform, from mobile phone to tablet and desktop.

On behalf of the IACR, I sincerely thank Kevin McCurley for the tremendous effort he has put into the upgrade. As a former IACR treasurer, president, and creator of the initial website, his contributions and dedication are exemplary!

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at CRYPTO in Santa Barbara! Please note that the early-registration deadline is on July 19th.

Christian Cachin
IACR President

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18 July 2019

Announcement Announcement
After a long development cycle, the iacr.org website has been updated with a style that is better suited for use on both desktop and phones. Some outdated features were phased out, while others still require further development. We welcome feedback or suggestions for new features via email to webfeedback at iacr.org.
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03 January 2019

Announcement Announcement

Dear members of the IACR

The year 2018 saw considerable growth for IACR: The first RWC sponsored by IACR took place in Zurich, attended by 600 people; the largest Crypto ever with 641 attendees, was held at UCSB in August; and the IACR counts a record number of more than 2100 members for the year 2019.

On behalf of everyone in the field, I'd like to thank the organizers of conferences, workshops, schools, and all further activities of the IACR, as well as the Board members and everyone else working behind the scene, for their efforts in making this possible.

As we move into 2019, let me mention some new developments.

Test-of-time award for the General Conferences

A new Test-of-time Award has been established recently and will start in 2019. It is given out yearly for each one of the three IACR General Conferences: Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt. The award honors "a paper with a lasting impact on the field" and will be given at the conference in year X to a paper published at the same conference in year X - 15.

The awards are selected by a yearly committee with five members, of which two members are appointed by Board and three are program chairs for the respective conferences in year X. This year's committee is chaired by Dan Boneh. Please see the details at https://iacr.org/testoftime/

Silvio Micali to hold the IACR Distinguished Lecture 2020

At its meeting in August, the Board has invited Silvio Micali to the hold the 2020 IACR Distinguished Lecture. This lecture is held annually and rotates between the three IACR General Conferences. We look forward to Silvio Micali's lecture at Crypto 2020!

For more information about the IACR Distinguished Lecture, see the website at https://iacr.org/publications/dl/

Board members

The IACR 2018 election was held in October/November to fill three of nine IACR Director positions. Congratulations to Michel Abdalla, Nadia Heninger, and Anna Lysyanskaya for being elected as directors! Michel and Anna were re-elected to their director positions and Nadia joins as a new director.

Among the incumbents of director positions, Phil Rogaway did not run for election and leaves the Board. Likewise the General Chairs of the 2019 General Conferences leave the Board and will again have more time to enjoy a conference as a guest: Orr Dunkelman, Tal Rabin, and Josef Pieprzyk. Let me thank all of them for their memorable contributions to the IACR!

Furthermore, Mitsuru Matsui has been elected as the chair of the Asiacrypt Steering Committee; this committee selects the venues for Asiacrypt as set forth in IACR's operational procedures (https://iacr.org/docs/steering.pdf). Thanks to Xuejia Lai for his work in this role until 2018.

Next IACR events

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

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2019!

Christian Cachin
IACR President

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19 October 2018

Public comments on draft report thru Oct 22
Announcement Announcement
NIST is considering the standardization of threshold schemes for cryptographic primitives. Your feedback and participation is welcome. Below are some useful links and dates: For questions or comments, contact threshold-crypto (at) nist.gov
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13 October 2018

IACR Youtube Channel
Announcement Announcement
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
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25 June 2018

Announcement Announcement
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
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06 January 2018

Announcement Announcement
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
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09 May 2017

Announcement Announcement
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.)
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29 January 2017

Announcement Announcement
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.
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26 December 2016

Announcement Announcement
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
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23 August 2016

Announcement Announcement

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:

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29 July 2016

Announcement Announcement
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
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02 February 2016

Announcement Announcement
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
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21 September 2015

Announcement Announcement

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)

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