Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC) is an international
cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...
conference
A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic.
Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main ...
(originally a workshop) held every August in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...
since 1994. The first workshop was organized by
Carlisle Adams, Henk Meijer,
Stafford Tavares and
Paul van Oorschot. Through 1999, SAC was hosted at either
Queen's University Queen's or Queens University may refer to:
*Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada
*Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
**Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (1918–1950)
**Queen's University of Belfast ...
or
Carleton University
Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning Worl ...
, but starting in 2000, locations have ranged across Canada. SAC has featured research presentations on many cryptographic topics, with a traditional focus on the design and
analysis
Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (3 ...
of
block cipher
In cryptography, a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm operating on fixed-length groups of bits, called ''blocks''. Block ciphers are specified cryptographic primitive, elementary components in the design of many cryptographic protocols and ...
s. SAC is regarded as a high-quality venue for presenting cryptographic results, and is the only cryptography conference held annually in Canada. Since 2003, SAC has included an invited lecture called the Stafford Tavares Lecture, in honor of one of its original organizers and strongest supporters.
Each year, SAC features four topics:
# Design and analysis of symmetric key primitives and cryptosystems including block and stream ciphers, hash functions, MAC algorithms, and authenticated encryption schemes.
# Efficient implementations of symmetric and public key algorithms.
# Mathematical and algorithmic aspects of applied cryptology.
# A special topic selected by the current co-chairs that may vary from year to year.
The "SAC" acronym is also a tongue-in-cheek reference to the
strict avalanche criterion, a cryptographic property defined in terms of
Boolean function
In mathematics, a Boolean function is a function whose arguments and result assume values from a two-element set (usually , or ). Alternative names are switching function, used especially in older computer science literature, and truth function ...
s.
External links
Main SAC conference page
Cryptography conferences
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