Selected Areas in Cryptography
About SAC
The Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC) series was initiated in 1994, when the first workshop was held at Queen's University in Kingston. The organizing committee for that first workshop consisted of Carlisle Adams, Henk Meijer, Stafford Tavares and Paul van Oorschot. From its original emphasis on block ciphers, SAC has evolved into a leading international conference in cryptography covering a range of topics in the field.
SAC has been held annually since 1994 in several Canadian provinces and is the only cryptography conference series that is held annually in Canada.
SAC 2024 – Montréal, Quebec – August 26–30, 2024
SAC 2024 recently took place in Montréal. Pre-proceedings are now available on the conference website.
SAC 2024 websiteSAC 2025 – Toronto, Ontario – August 12–15, 2025
SAC 2025 will have two submission deadlines: January 27 and May 7.
The special selected topic will be machine learning and cryptography: applications of machine learning to cryptography and cryptanalysis, and application of cryptanalytic techniques against machine learning algorithms.
SAC 2025 websiteSAC 2026 – Victoria, BC
SAC 2026 will take place at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
SAC 2027 – Ottawa, Ontario
SAC 2027 will take place at the University of Ottawa in Canada's capital city.
Subscribe to SAC events calendar
SAC Events Calendar
You can add the SAC events calendar to your calendar program to have the dates of the SAC conference and submission deadlines automatically appear in your calendar.
- Click the following link:
webcal://sacworkshop.org/calendar.ics - You may be asked to allow the web browser to open the Calendar application.
- Follow this link to access the calendar import page
- Or, from within Google Calendar click the + symbol next to "Other calendars" then select "From URL".
- Enter the address
https://sacworkshop.org/calendar.ics
- Follow this link to access the add calendar page on Outlook Office 365.
- Or from within Outlook Calendar click "Add calendar".
- Click "Subscribe from web".
- Enter the address
webcal://sacworkshop.org/calendar.ics
SAC Topics
Design and analysis
Design and analysis of symmetric key primitives and cryptosystems including block and stream ciphers, hash functions, MAC algorithms, and authenticated encryption.
Implementation and efficiency
Efficient implementations of algorithms for symmetric, public key, and post-quantum cryptography.
Mathematics and algorithms
Mathematical and algorithmic aspects of applied cryptology, including post-quantum cryptology.
Selected topics
A special topic selected each year by the current co-chairs.
The special topic for SAC 2025 will be machine learning and cryptography.
Proceedings
Since 1998, the proceedings of SAC have been published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science.