Preface, Theory of Cryptography, 2008

TCC 2008, the Fifth Theory of Cryptography Conference, was held in New York, New York, from March 19 to 21, 2008, at New York University. TCC 2008 was sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) and was organized in cooperation with the Department of Computer Science at New York University and the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences. The general chairs of the conference were Yevgeniy Dodis and Victor Shoup.

The conference received 81 submissions, of which the Program Committee selected 34 for presentation at the conference. The authors of two papers then decided to merge their papers, resulting in a total of 33 presented papers. The Best Student Paper Award was given to Paul Valiant for his paper "Incrementally Verifiable Computation or Knowledge Implies Time/Space Efficiency." These proceedings consist of revised versions of the presented papers. The revisions were not reviewed. The authors bear full responsibility for the contents of their papers.

The conference program also included four special events: An invited talk entitled "Randomness Extractors and their Cryptographic Applications" by Salil Vadhan; A tutorial entitled "Bridging Cryptography and Game Theory: Recent Results and Future Directions," given by Jonathan Katz (with an accompanying tutorial in the proceedings); A panel discussion on "Game Theory and Cryptography: Towards a Joint Point of View?" with Tal Rabin as moderator and Jonathan Katz, Silvio Micali, and Moni Naor as panelists; and a Rump Session chaired by Anna Lysyanskaya.

In spite of the relatively small number of submissions, many of them were of high quality. Consequently, the selection process was challenging and very competitive. Indeed, a number of good papers were not accepted due to lack of space in the program. The main considerations in selecting the program were conceptual and technical innovation, quality of presentation, and relevance to the theory of cryptography. An attempt was made to maintain the unique character of the conference as a stage for presenting innovative work on the foundations of cryptography.

I would like to thank the TCC steering committee for entrusting me with the role of Program Committee Chair. In the few years since its inception, TCC has been tremendously successful in attracting high quality papers and in providing a home and identity for the theory of cryptography community. I am honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to the continuation of this success.

Special thanks are due to the program committee members, who have dedicated so much time and effort to provide a thorough and in-depth review of the submissions, with high standards of professional integrity. I also thank the many external reviewers who assisted the Program Committee in its work. Most importantly, I thank the authors of submitted papers for their contributions; these papers are, after all, the only reason for TCC to exist.

I am grateful to the general chairs, Yevgeniy Dodis and Victor Shoup, and their assistant Anna Mackay for their thankless work on making the conference happen. Another special thanks is due to Shai Halevi for writing the software that greatly facilitated the committee work, and for his responsiveness in attending to our whims.

I thank our corporate Sponsors, the D.E. Shaw group, IBM, and Microsoft for their generous sponsorship of the conference, and Cynthia Dwork, Rosario Gennaro, Jonah Kolb, Christine Mathias, and Tal Rabin for their help in obtaining the sponsorships.

Finally, I appreciate the assistance provided by the Springer LNCS editorial staff, including Alfred Hofmann, Frank Holzwarth, and Anna Kramer, in assembling these proceedings.

January 2008                                Ran Canetti
TCC' 2008 Program Chair