In the tsunami of the catastrophic HeartBleed bug, this new IEEE workshop will be interesting.   cataCRYPT stands for “catastrophic events related to cryptography and security with their possible solutions.”

The main point is: many cryptographic protocols are only based on the security of one cryptographic algorithm (e.g. RSA) and  we don’t know the exact RSA security (including Ron Rivest). What if somebody finds a  clever and fast factoring algorithm? Well, it is indeed an hypothesis but we know several  instances of possible progress. A new fast algorithm is a possible catastroph if not handled  properly. And there are other problems with hash functions, elliptic curves, aso. Think also about the recent Heartbleed bug (April 2014, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed): the discovery was very late and we were close to a catastrophic situation.

So we are thinking about a regular workshop, the name is CATACRYPT, about these possible problems and their solutions. It includes problems with cryptographic algorithms, protocols, PKI, DRM, TLS-SSL, smart cards, RSA dongles, MIFARE, aso. Quantum computing, resilience and agility are also on the program.

The birth of cataCRYPT is not opportunistic.  His founder, Jean Jacques Quisquater, had launched the idea last year.  Its announcement following HeartBleed is a pure coincidence.

The paper submission deadline is 2 June 2014.   Hurry up…

The conference’s site is http://catacrypt.net/