Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (29 June 1893 - 28 June 1972) was a visionary Indian scientist whose prime contribution was in development of Statistics. Around his 100th birthday, cryptology research has been initiated at Indian Statistical Institute. After 25 years, the contribution of this institute in the field of cryptology has certainly received positive attention from the international community. In this context, to commemorate the 125th Birthday of Professor (this is the name by which most of the persons at Indian Statistical Institute remember Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, the founder), we thought it could be a good idea to underline the connection of Statistics and Cryptology once more.

Over the last few decades, the cryptology community has witnessed a huge volume of high-quality research work in the domain of symmetric ciphers. There had been different proposals and standardization of several new designs as well as a considerable amount of analysis put forward by eminent academicians. In most of the cases the analysis is based on statistical techniques and in turn it helped the design process too. In light of this, a special issue on "Statistics in Design and Analysis of Symmetric Ciphers" could be of significant interest to the cryptology community. This is to harness some important research contributions devoted towards symmetric ciphers into a single literary volume with substantial archival value.

For this special issue, we solicit the following in the field of symmetric ciphers:

  1. Novel Contributions;

  2. Research contributions published and/or presented at past conferences and workshops, with substantial revision and new contributions (at least 30%);

  3. Expository survey articles in relevant topics.

Some papers will be invited from eminent researchers. At the same time the contributory papers will be considered. There will be a detailed two round review process (at a similar standard for the invited as well as the contributed papers). Those who are submitting papers may use the usual web-based submission process of the journal and select the identifying Article Type "Statistics in Design and Analysis of Symmetric Ciphers".

Important Dates:

  • Last Date for Submission of Papers: 29 June 2017

  • 1st Round of Review to be completed by: 31 October 2017

  • Revised submission due by: 31 December 2017

  • Final Notification: 31 March 2018

  • Camera Ready Version Submission due by: 30 April 2018

  • Official Publication of the Complete Volume: 29 June 2018

Guest Editor: Subhamoy Maitra, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata