Techniques and Protocols to Preserve and Enhance Privacy

Dear Colleagues,

The remarkable growth of data science means that an ever-growing amount of insight can be extracted from the data generated by users and organizations around the world. It is crucial, hence, to develop and deploy the software and hardware solutions that enable users and organizations to have control over the data they generate and own. Cryptographic solutions to privacy-preserving protocols and privacy-enhancing technologies play a significant role in realizing such solutions.

This Special Issue aims to bring together original contributions to the understanding, design, and implementation of cryptographic techniques, algorithms, protocols, and technologies, with the main goal of enhancing and preserving data privacy. Contributions are invited throughout the range from theoretical foundations to real-life implementations. Theory-focussed contributions are invited to clarify applications and application-focused contributions to identify the theoretical underpinnings of their work. Areas of interest include but by no means are restricted to:

• Anonymous communication;
• Anonymous credential systems;
• Biometric, genomic and medical data privacy;
• Censorship resistance;
• Distributed ledger applications privacy;
• Fundamentals of privacy, anonymity, pseudonymity and unlinkability;
• Fundamentals of privacy-focused cryptographic algorithms and protocols, e.g., ring and group signatures, private information retrieval, oblivious transfer and mix-nets;
• Lightweight privacy-preserving protocols;
• Mobile, IoT, P2P and vehicular communication privacy;
• Privacy-preserving access control;
• Privacy-preserving data aggregation, analysis and mining;
• Privacy-preserving data storage and computation outsourcing;
• Privacy-preserving identification, authentication, and authorization;
• Privacy-preserving infrastructure, e.g., privacy-preserving smart grids;
• Privacy-preserving joint computation, e.g., privacy-preserving auctions;
• Privacy-preserving location-based services;
• Privacy-preserving logging, forensic readiness and audits;
• Privacy-preserving machine learning;
• Privacy-preserving services to organizations, e.g., privacy-preserving intrusion detections systems;
• Privacy-preserving services to users, e.g., privacy-preserving social networks;
• Usable privacy of cryptographic solutions;
• Web and web services privacy.

Dr. Siamak F. Shahandashti
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cryptography is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.