Asiacrypt

Asiacrypt
Name	Asiacrypt
Status	Active
Discipline	Cryptography
Scope	International
First	1990
Frequency	Annual
Organizer	International Association for Cryptologic Research
Country	Various in Asia-Pacific

Asiacrypt Asiacrypt is an annual international conference in cryptography established in 1990 that focuses on theoretical and applied research. It convenes researchers from institutions such as University of Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua University and is part of a series alongside Eurocrypt and Crypto (conference). The meeting attracts participants from organizations including IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Google Research, NIST, and CNRS to present advances in symmetric-key designs, public-key constructions, and cryptanalysis.

History

The conference originated amid a growth in public-key research following milestones like the development of RSA (cryptosystem), the invention of Diffie–Hellman key exchange, and the formalization of zero-knowledge proofs. Early venues included cities tied to regional technology hubs such as Singapore, Kyoto, Hong Kong, and Perth. Over time the program committees featured figures associated with Bell Labs, Harvard University, ETH Zurich, Weierstrass Institute, and University of California, Berkeley. Key developments presented at the conference paralleled breakthroughs in elliptic-curve cryptography, lattice-based proposals influenced by work at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and protocol advances resonant with standards bodies like IETF and ISO. The conference has evolved alongside policy discussions involving agencies such as European Commission and US Department of Commerce.

Organization and Sponsorship

Asiacrypt is typically organized by local academic hosts in collaboration with the International Association for Cryptologic Research and program committees drawn from universities including Princeton University, Yale University, University of Oxford, University of Tokyo, and Seoul National University. Sponsors have included corporate research labs such as Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, and financial backers from entities like World Bank and regional innovation agencies. Workshops co-located with the main event have been supported by foundations like the Simons Foundation and institutes such as Max Planck Society, with steering committees inviting representation from ACM and IEEE. Logistics have been coordinated with host city partners including municipal authorities in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Taipei.

Conference Topics and Scope

The scope spans areas influenced by landmark works from researchers at Bell Labs, INRIA, D.E. Shaw Research, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Typical topics include symmetric primitives related to standards like Advanced Encryption Standard, public-key systems building on Lattice-based cryptography, protocols referencing TLS, and formal analyses related to models used by SIP and OAuth. Other recurring themes intersect with research from CERN-affiliated computing models, post-quantum research referencing Shor's algorithm and Grover's algorithm, privacy technologies in line with efforts at Electronic Frontier Foundation, and applied security drawing on deployments by Amazon Web Services and Oracle Corporation.

Paper Submission and Review Process

Submissions follow a single-blind or double-blind model set by the program committee composed of members from Carnegie Mellon University, University of Waterloo, Cornell University, Australian National University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Call-for-papers deadlines align with timelines observed at Eurocrypt and CRYPTO (conference), and authors often come from labs such as Microsoft Research Asia and Tencent. Reviews are managed through platforms comparable to those used by EasyChair or institutional equivalents and employ external referees from institutions like Columbia University and University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Accepted papers undergo shepherding processes resembling practices at NeurIPS and SIGMOD, with program chairs coordinating rebuttal windows similar to procedures used by ICML.

Proceedings and Publications

Proceedings are published in series akin to Lecture Notes in Computer Science and archived with digital libraries maintained by partners like Springer and institutional repositories from Japanese National Institute of Informatics and National Taiwan University. Selected papers have been invited for expanded journal versions in outlets such as Journal of Cryptology, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and ACM Transactions on Information and System Security. The conference has collaborated on special issues with journals affiliated with Elsevier and Oxford University Press, and datasets or artifacts have been deposited with repositories following practices of Zenodo and institutional libraries at University of Melbourne.

Awards and Recognitions

Asiacrypt confers best paper awards and recognitions echoing honors at Turing Award-level ceremonies in formality though on a conference scale. Recipients have included researchers affiliated with RIKEN, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Peking University, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology whose work later earned citations alongside laureates from Gödel Prize and winners acknowledged by ACM SIGSAC. Student paper awards have highlighted contributions from graduate programs at EPFL, KAIST, and McGill University. Honorary sessions have featured speakers who held positions at NSA and national academies such as the Royal Society.

Impact and Criticism

The conference has influenced standards and deployments across companies like Cisco Systems, BlackBerry Limited, and Siemens. Work presented has informed policy debates involving World Intellectual Property Organization and interoperability efforts tied to ITU. Criticisms have arisen regarding geographic rotation and representation similar to critiques leveled at NeurIPS and ICLR, and concerns about industry-academia balance echo discussions held at AAAI and USENIX. Debates over openness, reproducibility, and peer review transparency mirror controversies that affected venues such as Science and Nature.

Category:Cryptography conferences