SAC 2002 was the Ninth Annual Workshop on Selected Areas in Cryptography. Previous workshops have been held at Queen's University in Kingston (1994, 1996, 1998, and 1999), Carleton University in Ottawa (1995 and 1997), Univ- sity of Waterloo (2000), and the Fields Institute in Toronto (2001). The intent of the workshopis to provide a relaxedatmosphere in which researchersin cr- tography can present and discuss new work on selected areasof current interest. The traditional themes for SAC workshops are: - Design and analysis of symmetric key cryptosystems. - Primitives for private-key cryptography,including block and streamciphers, hash functions, and MACs. - E?cientimplementationofcryptographicsystems inpublic- andprivate-key cryptography. The special theme for SAC 2002 was: - Cryptographic solutions for mobile and wireless network security. The local historic connections can be described in three words: communi- tions, transatlantic,and wireless.After JohnCabot discoveredNewfoundland at the end of the 15th century, sea communication was established between that eastern outpost of the Western Hemisphere and Europe. Also in Newfoundland is Hearts Content where the ?rst successful transatlantic cable was landed in 1866.
Mostremarkably,onDecember12,1901,GuglielmoMarconireportedfrom Signal Hill near St. John's that he successfully received the ?rst transatlantic wireless signals, three dots, the Morse coding of letter "S," sent from Cornwall, UK.