Paradigm Shifts in Cryptographic Engineering

The papers in this special section identify paradigm shifts in cryptographic engineering. Modern cryptography is almost five decades old, and we have seen some interesting breakthroughs throughout its relatively young history. These include the engineering foundations of symmetric key cryptography and block ciphers in particular (like the DES and the AES), the discovery of public-key cryptography, protocols for secure computations for general and specific tasks using interactions among parties and tools like homomorphic encryption (this line of work has been enhancing the use of cryptography beyond secure messaging into secure computing).