IACR Newsletter
The newsletter of the International Association for Cryptologic Research .Vol. 23, No. 1, Summer 2006.
Contents
- Access to the IACR Reading room
- 2006 elections
- Gold Medal of CNRS awarded to Jacques Stern
- Visas for IACR events
- Nominations for IACR Fellow deadline
- Calendar of events in cryptology
- Top Downloads from the Cryptology ePrint Archive
- Open Positions in Cryptology
Access to the IACR Reading room
The IACR Reading Room at Springer is now operational. You may use this to access all of the proceedings from IACR sponsored Conferences and Workshops as well as all of the issues of the Journal of Cryptology.
There is a two step process for creating your account on the Springer web site. First you must obtain your authentication token here . You must take this token here to create your userid and password. If you do not already have a springer account, look for the "Are you new to springer.com?" section and click CONTINUE.
Once you create an account, you will have access to all the proceedings of
- 1984-2005 CRYPTO
- 1984-2006 EUROCRYPT
- 1998-2005 ASIACRYPT
- 1997-2005 FSE
- 2000-2005 CHES
- 2000-2006 PKC
- 2004-2006 TCC
This is in addition to the Journal of Cryptology which is also available linked off the reading room. This includes
- 1988 - 2006 JoC
Feedback to the newsletter editor is welcome.
2006 elections
The 2006 election will contain two sections, a vote on the creation of an anonymity policy, and the normal election of directors. Members should expect their ballots to arrive by October 31. The web page for the election is here and the sample ballot is here .
Gold Medal of CNRS awarded to Jacques Stern
The Gold Medal of CNRS(*), which was created in 1954, is the highest national distinction that can be awarded to a French researcher for scientific accomplishments. Its impressive recipients list includes six Nobel prize-winners and two Fields medalists.
This year, the Gold Medal 2006 was awarded to Jacques Stern for his outstanding research in the field of cryptology and for creating the French school of cryptologic research around his laboratory in the ENS (Ecole Normale Supérieure). During his twenty years of research in cryptology, he supervised around thirty PhD thesis. Most of the French researchers active in our community are former students of Jacques, their collective work covers the whole field of cryptology, public key and secret key, cryptography and cryptanalysis.
As Jacques' first student in cryptology, I am extremely glad to see him receive this well-deserved award. It is a great honor for him and for all French cryptographers. The honor also reflects on the IACR which established Jacques Stern as an IACR Fellow in 2005.
Antoine Joux
Director of the IACR(*) Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique = French National Center for Scientific Research http://www.cnrs.fr
Visas for IACR events
The issue of Visas to attend IACR events continues to be significant. Information on the US visas can be found here , The time to obtain a US visa is variable, and may involve a visit to the Consulate for an interview. This has taken over 3 months for some individuals in the past. It is advisable to submit Visa applications as soon as possible to avoid last minute problems.
For all IACR conferences and workshops, please check the relevant web page for visa information or contact that conference's General Chair.
Nominations for IACR Fellow
We hope that you will consider devoting some of your time and effort to nominating or endorsing an IACR-Fellow candidate. IACR members can nominate or endorse other IACR members for this prestigious position. Nominations and endorsements are due on December 31, 2006. More information can be found here .
Calendar of IACR events
-
IACR Conferences
- Asiacrypt 2006 , December 3-7, Shanghai, China.
- Eurocrypt 2007 , May 20-24, 2007, Barcelona, Spain.
- Crypto 2007 , August 20-24, 2006, Santa Barbara, California, USA.
-
IACR Workshops
- Fast Software Encryption (FSE 2007) , March 26-28, Luxemburg, Luxemburg.
- The fourth Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC'07) , February 21-24, 2007, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
- International Workshop on Practice and Theory in Public Key Cryptography (PKC 2007) , April 16-20, Beijing, P.R.China.
-
Events In Cooperation with IACR
- The 5th International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security (CANS 2006) , December 8-10, 2006, Suzhou, China.
- 2007 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy , May 20-23, 2007, Oakland, California, USA.
Top downloads from the Cryptology ePrint Archive
The top papers downloaded from January through July of 2006 are listed below.
- Security and Privacy Issues in E-passports , Ari Juels, David Molnar, and David Wagner
This paper explores the privacy and security implications of next-generation identity authentication technology in the context of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standard for e-passports.
- How to Cheat at Chess: A Security Analysis of the Internet Chess Club , J. Black, M. Cochran and R. Gardner
The Internet Chess Club (ICC) is a popular online chess server with more than 30,000 members. While the security protocol used between client and server claims sufficient security for sensitive information to be transmitted, this paper shows that this is not true.
- A Technical Comparison of IPSec and SSL AbdelNasir Alshamsi and Takamichi Saito
Not finding any papers comparing IPSec and SSL in terms of characteristic and functionality, the authors created this paper focused on presenting an analysis of security and performance properties for IPSec and SSL.
- Provably Secure Subsitution of Cryptographic Tools Lea Kissner and David Molnar
This paper describes a new model for proving security of a protocol against malicious parties by introducing new proof techniques applicable to a wide range of cryptographic problems.
- Fault attack on the DVB Common Scrambling Algorithm Kai Wirt
This paper presents a fault attack on the combined block and stream ciphers used in the DVB system. This attack focuses on the block cipher to reconstruct the common key.
- The Misuse of RC4 in Microsoft Word and Excel, H. Wu
Reports a flaw in Microsoft Word and Excel's use of the stream cipher RC4. When an encrypted document gets modified and saved, the initialization vector remains the same allowing information to be recovered.
- Another Look at "Provable Security". II Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes
This paper focuses on the question of how to interpret reduction arguments in cryptography giving examples to show the subtlety and difficulty of this question.
Open positions in Cryptology
Current announcements on the IACR Website for Open Positions in Cryptology .
- University of Luxembourg
- Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
- Horst Goertz Institute for IT Security (HGI) University of Bochum, Germany
- Groupe des Écoles des Télécommunications, France
- University College Dublin
- University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland
- Palo Alto Resarch Center (PARC)
- Claude Shannon Institute
- Ecole Normale Superieure, Computer Science Department
- University of Bristol, Dept. of Computer Science
- COSIC, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
- University of Tsukuba, Japan
- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland
- Mathematical Institute, Leiden University, The Netherlands
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