Real World Crypto is THE convention anyone interested in cryptography – but usually annoyed by most of the too theoretical conventions of the field – should attend. It seeks to bridge the world of applied-cryptography to the one of academia. The speakers and the audience come from both the industry and universities to mingle together for a few days in what is in my eyes the most amazing convention about cryptography.

Last year the program went through the new cool-kids protocols like TLS 1.3 and QUIC. Sharing stories of all sorts, from the attacker’s point of view (with supporting papers being released during the talk) as well as from the defense point of view with companies like Google and cryptographers like Adam Langley. Current privacy tools like Tor and i2p were talked about and post-quantum algorithms were mentioned. The introduction of password hashing algorithms with Argon 2 was made. New technologies like the one of the block-chain, Intel’s SGX and Property-Preserving Encryption were in the mix. Different stories of little cryptographic flaws found in the wild as well as more serious ones like BREACH and Lucky 13 concluded the show. I’m missing a lot of them.

Dan Boneh gave us wine and sent us home, just after nominating Phillip Rogaway and the international miTLS team for the Levchin Prize, the conference’s prize of $10,000 given to the greatest contributors of the year in cryptography. In the large room of the Stanford campus you would have been able to see most of the alive, great cryptographers, clapping by your sides.

That is why we are filled with enthusiasm for next year’s edition of the conference: Real World Crypto 2017 and we are proud to announce that we will be sponsoring the event. So we hope to see you next year =)