Call for Papers

The 28th Conference on Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC 2021) will take place as an online conference on September 29 - October 01, 2021, and will be preceded by the SAC “Summer” School on September 27-28, 2021. SAC 2021 is held in cooperation with the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).

Topics & Proceedings

Authors are encouraged to submit original papers related to the following three regular topics for SAC 2021:

  1. Design and analysis of symmetric key primitives and cryptosystems, including block and stream ciphers, hash functions, MAC algorithms, and authenticated encryption schemes.

  2. Efficient implementations of symmetric, public key, and post-quantum cryptography.

  3. Mathematical and algorithmic aspects of applied cryptology, including post-quantum cryptology.


In addition, the following topic as the special topic for SAC 2021:

  1. Privacy enhancing mechanisms and techniques.


The SAC 2021 proceedings will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.

Instructions for Authors

  • Papers must be submitted electronically at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sac2021. Late submissions, submissions by email, or hardcopy submissions will not be accepted.

  • Submissions must be anonymous, with no author names, affiliations, acknowledgments or obvious references.

  • Papers must be typeset using LaTeX in the LNCS style with no alterations to font size or margins, with the exception of using \pagestyle{plain} to add page numbers. The main body of the paper must be at most 20 pages in length including bibliography. It is possible to have clearly marked appendices, as long as the total length of the paper does not exceed 30 pages. Program Committee members are not required to read appendices, so the paper should be intelligible without them.

  • Papers must be written in English, and begin with a title, a short abstract, and a list of keywords. An introduction section should summarize the paper’s contributions at a level appropriate for a non-specialist reader.

  • Submissions must be in PDF format.


Submission implies the commitment of at least one of the authors to present the paper at the conference. Note that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference will be held in an online manner. The SAC 2021 Chairs reserve the right to withdraw papers from the proceedings that are not presented at the conference or for which the camera-ready post-proceedings version is not submitted by the deadline.

Irregular submissions

SAC 2021 follows the IACR’s Policy on Irregular Submissions. Submissions must not substantially duplicate work that any of the authors has published elsewhere or has submitted in parallel to a journal or any other conference/workshop that has proceedings. The SAC 2021 Chairs reserve the right to share information about submissions with other program committees or journal editors to detect parallel submissions. In addition, the SAC 2021 Chairs reserve the right to contact an author’s institution/corporation and/or other appropriate organizations if an irregular submission is detected. Submissions not meeting these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits. For further details, please refer to the IACR Policy on Irregular Submissions.

Conflicts of interest

SAC 2021 follows the IACR’s Policy on Conflicts of Interest (COI). Authors, program committee members, and reviewers for SAC 2021 must adhere to the IACR Policy on Conflicts of Interest. Authors are requested to identify all members of the SAC 2021 Program Committee who have an automatic conflict of interest with the submission, and disclose it at the time of submission. It is the responsibility of all authors to ensure correct reporting of COI information. Submissions with incorrect or incomplete COI information may be rejected without consideration of their merits. For further details, please refer to the IACR Policy on Conflicts of Interest.

Code of conduct

While being held as an online event, SAC 2021 is committed to providing an experience free of harassment and discrimination, respecting the dignity of every participant. Participants who violate this code may be sanctioned and/or expelled from the event, at the discretion of the Chairs. Serious incidents may be referred to the IACR Ethics Committee for further possible action as well as to the relevant enforcement agency. Any action will only be taken with the consent of the affected party subject to applicable laws.

If you experience harassment or discriminatory behavior at SAC 2021, we encourage you to reach out to any of the SAC 2021 Chairs.

If you witness harassment or discriminatory behavior, please consider intervening.

Submission Link

Please submit your paper at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sac2021.


Important Dates

  • Abstract registration deadline: June 30, 2021 July, 7, 2021, 23:59 GMT

  • Final paper submission deadline: July, 12, 2021, 23:59 GMT

  • Notification of decision: August, 23, 2021

  • Pre-proceedings version deadline: September, 15, 2021

  • ‘Summer’ School: September, 27-28, 2021

  • Conference dates: September 29 - October 01, 2021


Program Committee

Riham AlTawy, University of Victoria (PC co-chair)

Diego Aranha, Aarhus University

Tomer Ashur, TU Eindhoven and KU Leuven

Paulo Barreto, University of Washington Tacoma

Daniel J. Bernstein, University of Illinois at Chicago and Ruhr University Bochum

Jean-François Biasse, University of South Florida

Nina Bindel, University of Waterloo and Institute for Quantum Computing

Claude Carlet, Universities of Bergen, and Paris 8

Chitchanok Chuengsatiansup , The University of Adelaide

Carlos Cid, Royal Holloway, University of London and Simula UiB

Christoph Dobraunig, Lamarr Security Research

Orr Dunkelman, University of Haifa

Aleksander Essex, Western University

Maria Eichlseder, Graz University of Technology

Britta Hale, Naval Postgraduate School

Andreas Hülsing, Eindhoven University of Technology, (PC co-chair)

Michael J. Jacobson Jr., University of Calgary

Christian Janson, Technische Universität Darmstadt

Marcel Keller, CSIRO's Data61

Péter Kutas, University of Birmingham

Subhamoy Maitra, Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata

Christian Majenz, QuSoft and CWI

Kalikinkar Mandal, University of New Brunswick

Maria Mendez Real, Université de Nantes

Ruben Niederhagen, University of Southern Denmark

Abderrahmane Nitaj, University of Caen Normandy

Lorenz Panny, Academia Sinica

Christiane Peters, IBM

Elizabeth Quaglia, Royal Holloway, University of London

Simona Samardjiska, Radboud University

Tobias Schneider, NXP Semiconductors

Nicolas Sendrier, Inria

Leonie Simpson, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Benjamin Smith, Inria and École polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris

Djiby Sow, Cheikh anta Diop university Dakar, Senegal

Tyge Tiessen, Technical University of Denmark

Yosuke Todo, NTT Corporation

Yuntao Wang, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Huapeng Wu, University of Windsor

Organizing Committee

Andreas Hülsing, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands.

Riham AlTawy, University of Victoria, Canada.


General enquiries about SAC 2021, including questions about registration, should be sent to sac2021@easychair.org