International Association
for Cryptologic Research

The IACR Test-of-Time Award is given annually for each one of the three IACR General Conferences (Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt). An award will be given at a conference for a paper which has had a lasting impact on the field and was published 15 years prior.

We welcome nominations for the 2021 award (for papers published in 2006) until Feb 20, 2021. The proceedings of these conferences can be found here:

• Asiacrypt 2006
• Crypto 2006
• Eurocrypt 2006

To submit your nomination please send an email to testoftime@iacr.org

More information about the IACR Test-of-Time awards can be found in iacr.org/testoftime/

The 2021 Selection Committee:

• Ueli Maurer (chair)
• Nigel Smart
• Francois-Xavier Standaert (Eurocrypt 2021 program co-chair)
• Chris Peikert (Crypto 2021 program co-chair)
• Mehdi Tibouchi (Asiacrypt 2021 program co-chair)

The deadline for nominating IACR members for the 2021 IACR Fellows class is extended to December 1st for this year.

The IACR Fellows Program recognizes outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to the field of cryptology.

Information about nominating a Fellow is available here.

The 2020 TCC Test-of-Time Award goes to  Zuzana Trubini and Martin Hirt, for their TCC 2008 paper "Perfectly-Secure MPC with Linear Communication Complexity ". 

The award committee recognizes this paper “for introducing hyper-invertible matrices to perfectly secure multiparty computation, thus enabling significant efficiency improvements and, eventually, constructions with minimal communication complexity." 

The TCC Test of Time Award recognizes outstanding papers, published in TCC at least eight years ago, making a significant contribution to the theory of cryptography, preferably with influence also in other areas of cryptography, theory, and beyond. The inaugural TCC Test of Time Award was given in TCC 2015 for papers published no later than TCC 2007.

The IACR and PKC Steering Committee are pleased to announce the 2020 Test-of-Time award for papers published PKC.

PKC is the International Conference on Practice and Theory in Public Key Cryptography, which was founded in 1998 and became an official IACR event in 2003. The Test-of-Time award recognizes outstanding papers, published in PKC about 15 years ago, making a significant contribution to the theory and practice of public key cryptography, preferably with influence either on foundations or on the practice of the field.

The 2020 award will be given on Wednesday June 3rd at PKC in a virtual Award Ceremony, for papers published in the conference's initial years of early 2000s and late 1990s. In the first few years a number of papers from a few different initial years of PKC can be recognized. Thereafter, the award will typically recognize one year at a time with one or two papers.

The recipients of the 2020 award are:

• On the Security of ElGamal Based Encryption , by Yiannis Tsiounis, and Moti Yung, PKC 1998.
• A Generalisation, a Simplification and Some Applications of Paillier's Probabilistic Public-Key System, by Ivan Damgård, and Mads Jurik, PKC 2001.
• Threshold Signatures , Multisignatures and Blind Signatures based on the Gap-Diffie-Hellman-Group Signature Scheme, by Alexandra Boldyreva, PKC 2003.

Congratulations to these authors for their impactful work! More information about the award can be found at https://iacr.org/meetings/pkc/test_of_time_award/

The IACR Fellows Program recognizes outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to the field of cryptology. Today we are pleased to announce five members that have been elevated to the rank of Fellow for 2020:

• Yevgeniy Dodis, for fundamental contributions to cryptology, especially to cryptographic randomness and symmetric-key primitives, and for service to the IACR.
• Rosario Gennaro, for essential contributions, including to threshold cryptography, delegated computation, and lower bounds, and for service to the IACR.
• Xuejia Lai, for fundamental contributions to research in symmetric-key cryptography, and for service to the IACR.
• Tal Malkin, for foundational contributions, including black-box separations, multiparty computation, and tamper resilience, and for service to the IACR.
• David Naccache, for significant contributions to applied cryptography in industry and academia, and for the service to the IACR.

Congratulations to the new fellows! More information about the IACR Fellows Program can be found at https://iacr.org/fellows/.

We are proud to announce the winners of the 2020 IACR Test-of-Time Award. This award honors papers published at the 3 IACR flagship conferences 15 years ago which have had a lasting impact on the field.

The Test-of-Time award for Eurocrypt 2005 is awarded to "Fuzzy Identity-Based Encryption " (Amit Sahai and Brent Waters), for laying the foundations of attribute-based encryption and other advanced notions of encryption.

The Test-of-Time award for Crypto 2005 is awarded to "Finding collisions in the full SHA-1 " (Xiaoyun Wang, Yiqun Lisa Yin and Hongbo Yu), for a breakthrough in the cryptanalysis of hash functions.

The Test-of-Time award for Asiacrypt 2005 is awarded to "Discrete-Log-Based Signatures May Not Be Equivalent to Discrete Log" (Pascal Paillier and Damien Vergnaud), developing a new meta-reduction approach in the security proof of cryptosystems.

For more information, see https://www.iacr.org/testoftime.

Starting with the CHES conference in 2020 the CHES Test-of-Time Award is given yearly. An award will be given in year X to honor a paper published at (T)CHES in years X-21 to X-19 which has had a lasting impact on the field with respect to academia and/or industry.

Nominations for the 2020 award (for papers published in 1999-2001) are welcomed by the selection committee. Deadline for nomination is May 3, 2020 23:59 AoE.

The proceedings of the relevant conferences can be found here:
CHES 1999
CHES 2000
CHES 2001

In order to nominate please send an email to the chair of selection committee with the following contents:

1. email subject line: ches test of time award nomination
2. mention: paper title and publication year
3. provide short justification why the paper should receive the award by providing number of citations, describing influence in industry, etc. in a max. 2 pages document or text in the email body

More information about the CHES Test-of-Time award can be found here: https://ches.iacr.org/testoftime.shtml

The 2020 Selection Committee:

• Benedikt Gierlichs (chair)
• Helena Handschuh
• Marc Joye
• Christof Paar
• Pankaj Rohatgi

The IACR Test-of-Time Award is given annually for each one of the three IACR General Conferences (Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt). An award will be given at a conference for a paper which has had a lasting impact on the field and was published 15 years prior.

We welcome nominations for the 2020 award (for papers published in 2005) until Feb 15, 2020. The proceedings of these conferences can be found here:

• Asiacrypt 2005
• Crypto 2005
• Eurocrypt 2005

To submit your nomination please use the following nomination form.

More information about the IACR Test-of-Time awards can be found in iacr.org/testoftime/

The 2020 Selection Committee:

• Tatsuaki Okamoto (chair)
• Ueli Maurer
• Anne Canteaut (Eurocrypt 2020 program co-chair)
• Daniele Micciancio (Crypto 2020 program co-chair)
• Shiho Morai (Asiacrypt 2020 program co-chair)

The 2019 TCC Test-of-Time Award goes to Paul Valiant, for his TCC 2008 paper "Incrementally Verifiable Computation or Proofs of Knowledge Imply Time/Space Efficiency". 

The award committee recognizes this paper “for demonstrating the power of recursive composition of proofs of knowledge and enabling the development of efficiently verifiable proofs of correctness for complex computations" 

The TCC Test of Time Award recognizes outstanding papers, published in TCC at least eight years ago, making a significant contribution to the theory of cryptography, preferably with influence also in other area of cryptography, theory, and beyond. The inaugural TCC Test of Time Award was given in TCC 2015 for papers published no later than TCC 2007.

The IACR and PKC Steering Committee are pleased to announce a new Test-of-Time award for papers published PKC.

PKC is the International Conference on Practice and Theory in Public Key Cryptography, which was founded in 1998 and became an official IACR event in 2003. The new Test-of-Time award recognizes outstanding papers, published in PKC about 15 years ago, making a significant contribution to the theory and practice of public key cryptography, preferably with influence either on foundations or on the practice of the field.

The inaugural award will be given next week at PKC 2019 in Beijing, for papers published in the conference's initial years of early 2000s and late 1990s. In the first few years a number of papers from a few different initial years of PKC can be recognized. Thereafter, the award will typically recognize one year at a time with one or two papers.

The recipients of the 2019 award are:

• How to Enhance the Security of Public-Key Encryption at Minimum Cost by Eiichiro Fujisaki, and Tatsuaki Okamoto, PKC 1999.
• Selecting Cryptographic key Sizes by Arjen K. Lenstra and Eric R. Verheul, PKC 2000 (later Journal of Cryptography 2000).
• The Gap-Problems: A New Class of Problems for the Security of Cryptographic Schemes by Tatsuaki Okamoto, and David Pointcheval, PKC 2001.

Congratulations to these authors for their impactful work! More information about the award can be found at https://iacr.org/meetings/pkc/test_of_time_award/

The IACR Fellows Program recognizes outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to the field of cryptology. Today we are pleased to announce six members that have been elevated to the rank of Fellow for 2019:

• Jonathan Katz, for broad contributions, especially in public-key encryption and cryptographic protocols, and for dedication to service and education.
• Kaoru Kurosawa, for seminal contributions spanning anonymity, e-voting, and public-key cryptography, and for service to the Japanese and international communities.
• Daniele Micciancio, for pioneering work on lattice-based cryptography and the complexity of lattice problems, and for service to the IACR.
• Vincent Rijmen, for co-designing AES, contributions to the design and cryptanalysis of symmetric primitives, and service to the IACR.
• Amit Sahai, for fundamental contributions, including to secure computation, zero knowledge, and functional encryption, and for service to the IACR.
• Xiaoyun Wang, for essential contributions to the cryptanalysis and design of hash functions, and for service to the IACR.

Congratulations to the new fellows! More information about the IACR Fellows Program can be found at https://iacr.org/fellows/.

We are proud to announce the winners of the 2019 IACR Test-of-Time Award. This award honors papers published at the 3 IACR flagship conferences 15 years ago which have had a lasting impact on the field.

The Test-of-Time award for Eurocrypt 2004 is awarded to "Fuzzy Extractors: How to Generate Strong Keys from Biometrics and Other Noisy Data" (Yevgeniy Dodis, Leonid Reyzin, Adam D. Smith), for introducing new techniques for entropy extraction from noisy data.

The Test-of-Time award for Crypto 2004 is awarded to "Multicollisions in Iterated Hash Functions. Application to Cascaded Constructions" (Antoine Joux), for the development of an important attack on a widely-used class of collision resistant hash functions.

The Test-of-Time award for Asiacrypt 2004 is awarded to "How Far Can We Go Beyond Linear Cryptanalysis?" (Thomas Baignères, Pascal Junod, Serge Vaudenay), for introducing new techniques in linear cryptanalysis of block ciphers.

For more information, see https://www.iacr.org/testoftime.

The 2019 Levchin Prize has been awarded to:

• Eric Rescorla, for sustained contributions to the standardization of security protocols, most recently in the development and standardization of TLS 1.3; and
• Mihir Bellare, for outstanding contributions to the design and analysis of real-world cryptography, including the development of the random oracle model, modes-of-operation, HMAC, and formal models of key exchange.

The Levchin Prize was established in 2015 by internet entrepreneur, Max Levchin. The prize honors significant contributions to real-world cryptography and celebrates recent advances that have had a major impact on the practice of cryptography and its use in real-world systems. Up to two awards will be given every year and each carries a cash prize of $10,000.

This year's prize was awarded at the Real World Crypto symposium in San Jose, California, USA.

More information about the Levchin Prize and the awardees can be found at levchinprize.com

The deadline for nominating IACR members for the 2019 IACR Fellows class is earlier than in previous years! As announced at the Eurocrypt and Crypto membership meetings, all nomination materials must be received by November 15.

The IACR Fellows Program recognizes outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to the field of cryptology. Information about nominating a Fellow is available from the IACR Fellows website.

The 2018 TCC Test-of-Time Award goes to Dan Boneh, Eu-Jin Goh and Kobbi Nissim, for their TCC 2005 paper "Evaluating 2-DNF Formulas on Ciphertexts".

The award committee recognizes this paper "for introducing compact two-operation homomorphic encryption and developing new bilinear map techniques that led to major improvements in the design of cryptographic schemes."

The TCC Test of Time Award recognizes outstanding papers, published in TCC at least eight years ago, making a significant contribution to the theory of cryptography, preferably with influence also in other area of cryptography, theory, and beyond. The inaugural TCC Test of Time Award was given in TCC 2015 for papers published no later than TCC 2007.

The IACR Fellows Program recognizes outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to the field of cryptology. Today we are pleased to announce four members that have been elevated to the rank of Fellow for 2018:

• Juan Garay: For fundamental contributions at the interface of cryptography and distributed computing, and for service to the cryptographic research community.
• Yuval Ishai: For essential contributions to the theory of cryptographic protocols, low-complexity cryptography, and other foundations of cryptography.
• Paul Kocher: For fundamental contributions to the study of side-channel attacks and countermeasures, cryptography in practice, and for service to the IACR.
• Stafford Tavares: For significant contributions to the design and analysis of block ciphers, for founding the SAC conference, and for service to the IACR.

Congratulations to the new fellows! More information about the IACR Fellows Program can be found at https://iacr.org/fellows/.

The IACR congratulates Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman for being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for their invention of the RSA algorithm. Their citation reads as follows:

RSA Cryptography is the world's most widely used public-key cryptography method for securing communication on the Internet. Introduced in 1977 by MIT colleagues Rivest, Shamir and Adleman, RSA Cryptography is instrumental to the growth of e-commerce and is used in almost all Internet-based transactions to safeguard sensitive data such as credit card numbers.

They will be formally inducted on May 3 in Washington DC.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization which recognizes individual inventors who hold a U.S. patent of highly significant technology. Founded in 1973, its primary mission is to "honor the people responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible."

The IACR congratulates Chris Peikert and Alon Rosen for being awarded the Theory of Cryptogrpahy Conference (TCC) Test of Time Award. Their article Efficient Collision-Resistant Hashing from Worst-Case Assumptions on Cyclic Lattices, published in TCC 2006, is recognized for advancing the use of hard algebraic lattice problems in cryptography, paving the way for major theoretical and practical advances. The award was presented this Tuesday at the TCC 2017 conference in Baltimore.

The TCC Test of Time award was introduced in 2015. It recognizes outstanding papers, published in the Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) at least eight years ago, making a significant contribution to the theory of cryptography, preferably with influence also in other area of cryptography, theory, and beyond. For more information about the Test of Time award, including information on nominating a paper, please see the page at http://www.iacr.org/workshops/tcc/awards.html.

The IACR Fellows Program recognizes outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to the field of cryptology. Today we are pleased to announce five members that have been elevated to the rank of Fellow for 2017:

Jan Camenisch: For contributions to the theory and practice of privacy-preserving protocols and impact on government policy and industry.

Louis Guillou: For visionary actions that brought cryptography and smart cards to the real world, and for essential contributions to cryptographic standards.

Kwangjo Kim: For cryptographic design, education, and leadership, and for exemplary service to IACR and the Asia-Pacific cryptographic community.

Christof Paar: For founding CHES, service to the IACR, and for important contributions to secure and efficient implementation of cryptography.

Kenneth G. Paterson: For research and service contributions spanning theory and practice, and improving the security of widely deployed protocols.

Congratulations to the new fellows!

The 3rd annual TCC Test of Time Award, is awarded to the article Indifferentiability, Impossibility Results on Reductions, and Applications to the Random Oracle Methodology by Ueli Maurer, Renato Renner, and Clemens Holenstein, that was published in TCC 2004.

This work received the test of time award for introducing the security notion of "indifferentiability", that had a significant impact on both the theory of cryptography and the design of practical cryptosystems.

The award will be presented on Tuesday Nov 1 at TCC 2016-B in Beijing.