Nigel Smart

Join us on Thursday, Oct 23rd at 5PM CEST for an FHE.org meetup with Shane Kosieradzki, Cryptographic Engineer at Crypto Asset Technology Labs, and Hannah Mahon, Research Scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute, presenting "Encrypted Matrix Multiplication Using 3-Dimensional Rotations".

If you are looking for a present for that cryptographer in your life for Xmas, then here you go....

obsolescence.dev/enigma-touch...

Space is limited, and so there is a need to register, with priority going to people from companies which are most likely to benefit from the event.

Register here: coedcon.github.io/registration...

The next COED Industry Day is going to be held in Milan....

coedcon.github.io/index.html

Going to be a super cool mix of speakers, from Bosch, Nokia Bell Labs, Cybernetica, Roseman Labs and Zama

Volume 2 Issue 3 of Communications in Cryptology is now available....

cic.iacr.org/i/2/3

Just a few days left....

RWC 2026 call for papers Real World Crypto Symposium

This is a friendly reminder that the call for contributed talks to Real World Crypto in Taipei 2026 is open until October 10. We are looking for interesting talks bridging cryptography and its real-world use! Also it’s a great way to meet new people! rwc.iacr.org/2026/contrib...

As with last year, students can register for free by emailing contact@fhe.org from their academic email address.

This year there will only be 200 seats available, so reserve them early!

Sponsors can also participate still by emailing with their proposals!

FHE.org 2026 Taipei Registrations are open!

Registrations are open for the 5th Annual FHE.org Conference on Fully Homomorphic Encryption, colocated with Real World Crypto 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 8, 2026.

Get your tickets now! luma.com/fhe-org-conf...

Under one week left to submit your papers to the next issue of the IACR's Communications in Cryptology...

cic.iacr.org

You know it makes sense

- Fast turnaround

- Diamond Open Access

- No travel to conferences in some god-forsaken location

Personal interests and lack of interest in others of support for the editors

What you are seeing is the inevitable result of what I was trying to stop many years ago. Unless we support people standing up for standards then we do not get standards.

I have sympathy for the editors.

When IACR eprint editor many many years ago I tried to have a policy of accepting only papers which "looked" like an academic paper.

Got lots of vitriolic complaints from some sections of the community, and no one supported me. So I resigned.

KU Leuven spin-off creates world's first chip for encrypted data processing A new KU Leuven spin-off says it has achieved a global first: enabling encrypted computer data to be processed without ever being decrypted...

KU Leuven spin-off creates world's first chip for encrypted data processing

Get your talk proposals in for FHE.org in Taipei next year...

The Call for Presentations for the 5th Annual FHE.org Conference on Fully Homomorphic Encryption, to be held in Taipei in March 2026 is open. Just under 7 weeks left (November 1st) to submit your 2-4 page PDF on your FHE project, use-case, or demo.

#FHE #HomomorphicEncryption #FHEorg2026

EU Chat Control criticized by 500 cryptographers over privacy risks

Over 500 cryptographers warn the EU draft “Chat Control” could weaken end‑to‑end encryption. The EU council votes on the Danish text on Sep 12, 2025. https://getnews.me/eu-chat-control-criticized-by-500-cryptographers-over-privacy-risks/ #euchatcontrol #privacy #cryptography

The EU Parliament has published a new proposal for Chat Control to mass-surveil all digital communication in Europe. The proposal is ineffective, weakens secure communication, and violates basic human privacy. This must be stopped immediately. #ChatControl
csa-scientist-open-letter.org/Sep2025

The EU wants to spend your money to assemble a giant mass surveillance machine with little effect on harm against children. Chat Control is not effective, weakens security for all and does not respect privacy. Contact your EU representatives and let them know.

csa-scientist-open-letter.org/Sep2025

Check out the new open letter signed by more than 450 scientists who have serious concerns on the latest (July 2025) version of the chat control proposal. csa-scientist-open-letter.org/Sep2025

Officially old.

@londmathsoc.bsky.social have sent me an email saying I qualify for senior membership.

Down hill from here on in.

Video listed as private, cannot view it

= THE IRISH TIMES Forcing companies to create access pathways within the technical standards upon which encryption relies would put all online activities at risk, as those pathways amount to security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by others. There's a fanciful belief, among some lawmakers, that we can undermine encrypted communications in a secure way: open a little door for just the "good" guys to scurry in, take a peek at what one person is communicating to another, and scurry back out again, without undermining the security of the service for all users. But cybersecurity experts, technologists and computer scientists across the world have been clear: forcing companies to build backdoor access only for law enforcement is deeply misguided.

THE IRISH TIMES & As the European Court of Human Rights held last year, weakening encryption by creating backdoors would make it "technically possible to perform routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal electronic communications. Backdoors may also be exploited by criminal networks and would seriously compromise the security of all users' electronic communications". Even Europol and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity agree. They previously conceded that mandatory backdoors or weakening encryption would "increase the attack surface for malicious abuse, which, consequently, would have much wider implications for society". They also questioned the efficacy of such measures: "Moreover, criminals can easily circumvent such weakened mechanisms and make use of

Just a flavour:
1) you can’t make a backdoor that only lets goodies in. Baddies will also use it, to devastating effect.
2) Security services, and even Europol- who face the shape end of global gangs and threats- have acknowledged as much.

Another great video from Oxford Maths dept...

Great video from Oxford Maths showing how Uni maths is different from school maths. Basically maths at Uni is a different subject to that at school. You really need to go back to basics to learn what a number is, and then build up from there.

Map of where people come from who submit papers to the IACR eprint archive

eprint.iacr.org/geo/index.html

Zooming way out what is interesting is that North America (185) is much less represented than Europe (406) and Asia (234). Note this is counting locations/institutes as opposed to papers.

Quantum computers vs a dog...

eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237.pdf

RWC 2026 call for papers Real World Crypto Symposium

The Call for Contributed Talks is now open for RWC 2026! And the deadline for submissions is now Oct. 10, 2025.
rwc.iacr.org/2026/contrib...

🔐 You're invited!
Join us on 18 Nov 2025 in Leuven (Belgium) for the #IEEE Milestone Award Ceremony, honoring #Rijndael, the Belgian cipher selected as #AES, protecting billions worldwide.
📅 Register (free) by 25 Oct:
🔗 rijndael-ieeemilestone.cs.ru.nl/index
#CyberSecurity #Cryptography

We've published Volume 2, Issue 2 of IACR Communications in Cryptology. This now brings us over 200 articles published in six issues. cic.iacr.org/i/2/2 It may be time to overhaul the rest of IACR publishing. 🤔