The International Conference on Historical Cryptology (HistoCrypt 2027) invites submissions of papers to its annual conference on historical cryptology. The conference will be held on June 16-18, 2025, at the Stockholm, Sweden. Please note the date.

Scope and list of topics

HistoCrypt addresses all aspects of historical cryptography and cryptanalysis. “History” is understood in the broadest sense and includes contemporary history. The conference’s subjects include, but are not limited to:

The Program Committee is pleased to announce the following keynotes:

• Breaking the Code: The Decipherment of Late 3rd–Early 2nd Millennium BCE Iranian Linear Elamite Writing by François Desset
• 30 Years of Perplexity by Kevin Knight
• A metahistory of the breaking of the Enigma ciphers. Why has the picture of this adventure been distorted to such an extent? by Marek Grajek

The program for HistoCrypt 2025 is now ready and can also be downladed as PDF.

Paper submission

All submissions must follow the HistoCrypt style files, which are available for LaTeX (preferred) and MS Word:

• Template format: histocrypt.pdf
• MS Word Template: histocrypt.doc
• LaTeX Template: histocrypt.zip

Papers must be submitted digitally, in PDF, and uploaded through the online conference system. The page limits for submissions are: up to ten pages for regular papers, up to four pages for short papers including bibliographic references. Paper submissions that violate the requirements will be returned to the authors.

Breaking the Code: The Decipherment of Late 3rd–Early 2nd Millennium BCE Iranian Linear Elamite Writing

First discovered in Susa in 1903, Linear Elamite writing is one of the world’s oldest writing systems, alongside Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. This talk aims to present the steps that led to its decipherment between 2017 and 2020 while highlighting its very original phonetic structure. Examples of newly deciphered texts will also be provided, along with discussions on newly emerging linguistic questions.

30 Years of Perplexity

Computational linguists have been trying for decades to accurately predict the next word in running text. Why were they so determined to succeed at this strange task? How did they track their successes (and failures)? Why was the word-prediction task at the center of early statistical work in text compression, code-breaking, machine translation, and speech recognition? Will word prediction lead to artificial general intelligence (AGI)? I’ll attempt to answer these questions with formulas and anecdotes drawn from three decades of research in various fields.

A metahistory of the breaking of the Enigma ciphers. Why has the picture of this adventure been distorted to such an extent?

by Marek Grajek

Marek Grajek is a retired consultant in cryptology applications and a historian of the discipline. He is the author of more than a dozen books in this field.

Back to program

Bylaws of HistoCrypt

The legal bylaws of HistoCrypt can be accessed here or downloaded as a PDF.

Steering Committee

• Carola Dahlke (chair), Deutsches Museum, Germany
• Benedek Láng (vice chair),  Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
• Richard Bean (secretary), University of Queensland, Australia
• Dermot Turing (member), Kellogg College Oxford, UK
• Camille Desenclos (member), Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France

Program Committee

• Eugen Antal (program chair), Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
• Carola Dahlke (area chair), Deutsches Museum, Germany
• Benedek Láng (area chair), Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
• Beáta Megyesi (area chair), Stockholm University, Sweden
• Michelle Waldispühl (area chair), University of Oslo, Norway
• Richard Bean, University of Queensland, Australia
• Paolo Bonavoglia, Mathesis Venezia c/o Convitto “Marco Foscarini”, Italy
• Camille Desenclos, Université de Picardie Jule Verne, France
• Jörgen Dinnissen, Independent researcher, The Netherlands
• John Dooley, Knox College, United States
• Magnus Ekhall, Private Researcher, Sweden
• Joachim von zur Gathen, Emeritus, Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology, Germany
• Otokar Grošek, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
• Kevin Knight, Threeven Labs, United States
• Jozef Kollár, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
• Nils Kopal, University of Siegen, Germany
• George Lasry, DECRYPT and CrypTool projects, Germany
• Jakub Mírka, The State Regional Archives in Pilsen, Czechia
• Diego Navarro, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain
• Ingo Niebel, Private Researcher, Germany
• Paul Reuvers, Crypto Museum, Netherlands
• Anne-Simone Rous, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany
• Klaus Schmeh, Codebreaking-Guide.com, Germany
• Gerhard F. Strasser, The Pennsylvania State University, United States
• Satoshi Tomokiyo, Cryptiana, Japan
• Serge Vaudenay, EPFL, Switzerland
• Frode Weierud, Crypto Cellar Research, Norway
• Pavol Zajac, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia

Local Organizing Committee

• Piotr Bojarski, Enigma Cipher Centre, Poland
• Marcin Słomiński, Enigma Cipher Centre, Poland

The proceedings of HistoCrypt 2025 are now published and available online. Find the whole volume here.

Clicking on the Link below “Collections”, you can access the single articles.

Enjoy!

The registration is open.

You can register for HistoCrypt 2025 here. Additionally, you can use the information from here for your traveling arrangements.

For more information, please see the program details or contact the Local Arramgement Chait (LAC).

An event like this isn’t possible without the help of our sponsors and partners.

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