Message from the General Chair

Welcome to the 31st IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF)!

CSF has a long and colorful history. The Computer Security Foundations Workshop was created in 1988 as a workshop of the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Security and Privacy. In 2007, the workshop became an IEEE Symposium, with a policy for open, increased attendance. Over the years, many seminal papers and techniques have been presented first at CSF. Furthermore, CSF continues to evolve as the symposium matures, widening its scope and attracting new generations of researchers.

This year’s symposium will be held in Oxford, UK, as part of the Federated Logic Conference (FLoC) 2018. Oxford provides its renowned academic tradition and beautiful setting for this great event: FLoC brings together several international conferences related to mathematical logic and computer science.  The interactions with researchers from the wider FLoC community should set the perfect environment for stimulating discussions.  Two security workshops are affiliated with CSF 2018 and FLoC 2018: Graphical Models for Security (GraMSec) 2018 and Foundations of Computer Security (FCS) 2018. CSF and workshop attendees are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunities for interaction and collaboration that this co-location provides.

A total of 72 full papers were submitted this year to CSF. Of these 72 full papers, the program committee accepted 25 papers, which appear in this volume. This is an acceptance rate of approximately 35%. Many papers received 4 reviews, largely carried out by the PC, but sometimes by external experts, and authors were given the opportunity to respond to these reviews, and have their response considered during final PC discussions.

Similarly to previous years, CSF 2018 employed a light form of double-blind reviewing. Paper authors were asked to redact their names from their submissions and to cite their own work in third person. Authorship was revealed to a reviewer upon submitting their review, to help reveal inadvertent conflicts of interest.

Many people contributed to the successful organization and running of CSF 2018, and we are thankful to all of them. Stephen Chong and Stéphanie Delaune chaired the program committee and did an outstanding job of producing the technical program and helping out in many other ways. They were supported by thorough work of the program committee members and external reviewers. This year’s Call for Papers especially encouraged submissions related to Blockchains and Computer-aided Cryptography. Elaine Shi and Bogdan Warinschi served as special session chairs, and we thank them for the additional expertise and guidance they provided in the review of these papers. Luca Viganò acted as financial chair and provided invaluable advice throughout. Publications chair Deepak Garg efficiently handled all the tasks associated with the production of the proceedings. Publicity chair Matteo Maffei was responsible for all CSF communication sending out timely calls for papers. The CSF steering committee provided helpful guidance and feedback, particularly Joshua Guttman, as did Ulf Lindqvist and Sean Peisert, the outgoing and incoming chairs of the IEEE Computer Society's  Technical Committee on Security and Privacy. Paula Anderson and Momoko Vanna of the IEEE Computer Society have been incredibly helpful in organizing CSF, as were Lisa O'Conner and Patrick Kellenberger of the IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Services.

We would like to thank Moshe Vardi, Daniel Kroening, and Mara Kwiatkowska, the chairs of FLoC 2018, for making this huge event possible in the first place.  A special thank you is due to the staff at the University of Oxford for all their hard work and doing an excellent job in helping with planning and management, and handling the local arrangements associated with CSF and FLoC.

Finally, we thank all the authors and attendees of CSF 2018 who continue to make CSF enjoyable, stimulating, and fruitful.

Enjoy CSF 2018 and your stay in the beautiful city of Oxford!