The Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research (CACR) is a group of industrial representatives, professors, and students at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

Waterloo Waterloo most commonly refers to: * Battle of Waterloo, 1815 battle where Napoleon's French army was defeated by Anglo-allied and Prussian forces * Waterloo, Belgium Waterloo may also refer to: Other places Australia * Waterloo, New South Wale ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada who work and do research in the field of

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

. The CACR aims to facilitate leading-edge cryptographic research, to educate students at postgraduate levels, to host conferences and research visits, and to partner with various industries. It was officially opened on June 19, 1998. The CACR involves students and professors from four departments at the school:

Combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

Optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Electrical and Computer Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, and Pure

Math Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

. It does not have a physical location, but utilizes resources from all the aforementioned departments. The CACR plays a part in many conferences and workshops, including the following: *CACR Information Security Workshop *Privacy and Security Workshop *Workshop on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) *Workshop on

Selected Areas in Cryptography Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC) is an international cryptography Academic conference, conference (originally a workshop) held every August in Canada since 1994. The first workshop was organized by Carlisle Adams, Henk Meijer, Stafford Tavares ...

(SAC) The CACR includes the following notable faculty: *

Scott Vanstone Scott A. Vanstone (September 14, 1947 – March 2, 2014) was a mathematician and cryptographer in the University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics. He was a member of the school's Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research, and was also a founde ...

, professor, co-author of the '' Handbook of Applied Cryptography'', founder of

Certicom BlackBerry Limited, formerly Research In Motion (RIM), is a Canadian software company specializing in secure communications and the Internet of Things (IoT). Founded in 1984, it developed the BlackBerry brand of interactive pagers, smartphon ...

* Alfred Menezes, professor, co-author of the ''Handbook of Applied Cryptography'' *

Neal Koblitz Neal I. Koblitz (born December 24, 1948) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. He is also an adjunct professor with the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo. He is the creator of hype ...

, adjunct professor, creator of

elliptic curve cryptography Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC allows smaller keys to provide equivalent security, compared to cryptosystems based on modula ...

and

hyperelliptic curve cryptography Hyperelliptic curve cryptography is similar to elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) insofar as the Jacobian of a hyperelliptic curve is an abelian group in which to do arithmetic, just as we use the group of points on an elliptic curve in ECC. Defi ...

* Doug Stinson, professor, author of ''Cryptography: Theory and Practice'' *

Ian Goldberg Ian Avrum Goldberg (born March 31, 1973) is a cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is best known for breaking Netscape's implementation of SSL (with David Wagner), and for his role as chief scientist of Radialpoint (formerly Zero Knowledge Syst ...

, assistant professor, creator of

Off-the-Record Messaging Off-the-record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR uses a combination of Advanced Encryption Standard, AES symmetric-key algorithm with 128 bits key length, the Diffie–Hel ...

External links

Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research homepage
{{University_of_Waterloo University of Waterloo Cryptography organizations 1998 establishments in Ontario