Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Provable Security
Xiaofeng ChenKey Laboratory of Computer Networks and Information Security, Ministry of Education, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, P.R.China xfchen@xidian.edu.cn
Provable security is an important research area in modern cryptography. Cryptographic primitives or
protocols without a rigorous proof cannot be regarded as secure even in practice. In fact, there are many
schemes that were originally thought as secure but eventually broken, which clearly indicates the need
of formal security assurance. With provable security, we are confident in using cryptographic schemes
and protocols in various real-world applications. Meanwhile, schemes with provable security sometimes
give only theoretical feasibility rather than a practical construction, and correctness of the proofs may be
difficult to verify.