S&B 2017 - IEEE SECURITY & PRIVACY ON THE BLOCKCHAIN (IEEE S&B)

Today, the security and privacy properties of blockchain technologies are still an emerging field that is need of further research. The Bitcoin electronic cash system introduced the new field of blockchain technology as a practical mechanism for a permissionless and censorship-resistant e-cash over the Internet. However, the decentralized network and public verifiability of Bitcoin often do not provide the security and privacy properties assumed by its users. For example, despite a common assumption that Bitcoin is anonymous, transactions can be de-anonymized, limiting the commercial utility of the network and also harms individual privacy. Generalizations of Bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology as a platform for smart contracts by Ethereum are still immature. For example, security issues in the underlying programming language for smart contracts in Ethereum led to the massive DAO Hack. More than ever, proper security and privacy properties need to be designed into the underlying framework for blockchain technologies.
Call for Papers
The Security and Privacy on the Blockchain Workshop is the first IEEE forum for research on the security and privacy properties of blockchains as a solution for transactional systems. We solicit previously unpublished papers offering novel contributions in both Bitcoin and wider blockchain research. Papers may present advances in the theory, design, implementation, analysis, verification, or empirical evaluation and measurement of existing systems. Papers that shed new light on past or informally known results by means of sound formal theory or thorough empirical analysis are welcome.
Topics of Interest include:
Novel attacks on blockchain technologies
Improvements to core blockchain cryptographic primitives
Compact ring signatures
Compact range proofs
Privacy-Preserving Signature Aggregation
(De) anonymization of blockchain records
Improvements of SNARKs for blockchain technologies
Formal verification of smart contracts
The security of SPV models
Game theoretic analysis of proof-of-work
Relevant Systematization of Knowledge papers
Security and privacy trade-offs related to scalability and decentralization
This topic list is not meant to be exhaustive. S&B is interested in all aspects of the blockchain research relating to security and privacy. Papers that are considered out of scope may be rejected without full review. We encourage submissions that are "far-reaching" and "risky."