International Conference on

Selected Areas in Cryptography

Canada's research conference on cryptography since 1994
SAC logo

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 website

SAC 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 website

SAC 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.

SAC Topics

Design and analysis icon
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 icon
Implementation and efficiency

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

Mathematics and algorithms icon
Mathematics and algorithms

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

Selected topics icon
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.

See past selected topics.

Proceedings

Since 1998, the proceedings of SAC have been published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science.