The most important cryptography papers

[tob_scott_a]

Recommended for this list:

1. https://archiv.infsec.ethz.ch/education/fs08/secsem/bleichen... - This is necessary to scare newbies away from implementing textbook RSA

2. https://www.iacr.org/archive/eurocrypt2002/23320530/cbc02_e0... - Vaudenay's attack on CBC mode is essential to practitioners

3. https://mega-awry.io/pdf/mega-malleable-encryption-goes-awry... - A real world attack on Mega's encryption

Unfortunately, most interesting cryptanalysis results are easier to find as blog posts than academic papers.

For example: the Frozen Heart vulnerability in zero-knowledge proof systems that rely on the weak Fiat-Shamir transform.

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2022/04/13/part-1-coordinated-d...

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2022/04/15/the-frozen-heart-vul...

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2022/04/18/the-frozen-heart-vul...

These blog posts are great, but they aren't academic papers, so they may not qualify for your list.

[ShaneCurran]

Thank you! We'll create some nice cover illustrations and add these to the list

[daghamm]

This feels more like a posers guide to crypto.

It includes many "famous" and some overhyped papers, but not the ones you actually need to read to become a cryptographer. For example, I see nothing about cryptoanalysis in that list.

[ShaneCurran]

I commented on this on another thread, but in all honesty it was intentionally skewed towards more "popular" papers as a quick reference guide. A lot of the people that use this resource are university students or cryptography first-timers, and undergrad university curricula do tend to focus more on the "famous" papers rather than the most novel/important.

That being said, if you have suggestions for papers to include we'd be happy to add them!

[eimrine]

Great resource! I would like to ask the webmaster to show the dates of each work visible without any searching.

[ShaneCurran]

Good suggestion! We (unfortunately) don't have an official webmaster at the company, but will try and surface this data on the page :)

[gmiller123456]

Not sure if I'm just not seeing it, does the author(s) state what criteria they used for deciding what to include/exclude?

[ShaneCurran]

Founder of Evervault here — we created the page more as a simple reference to the most common papers that people are looking for when they're learning cryptography from scratch (with a mathematical background). As a result, frankly it skews more towards the "most famous" papers rather than the most important. If you have suggestions for papers you think we should include, we'd be happy to add them!

[throwaway72216]

Good list except one very questionable paper, CryptDB, which is known to have been misleading in its claims and got caught by other cryptographers (after which the CryptDb authors quietly edited their previous paper while also attacking those who found the flaws).

[tptacek]

In a historical sense, I guess.

[ShaneCurran]

That's true! To be honest the papers start at the _beginning_ of (modern) cryptography, and the site doesn't factor in some of the more modern research in crypto. We haven't refreshed it in a couple of years, but should include some of the new FHE and PQC standardized schemes etc.

Any thoughts on what we should add/remove?

[Wistar]

Unsurprised to see Matt Blaze’s name; surprised to not see Josh Benaloh’s name.

[ShaneCurran]

We should definitely include Josh. Any suggestions specifically on which paper of his would be most useful to include?