Introduction to the CHES 2016 special issue

This special issue of the Journal of Cryptographic Engineering (JCEN) contains extended versions of four of the papers that were presented at the 18thConference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES 2016), held at the University of California at Santa Barbara, CA, USA, August 17–19, 2016. The conference was sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research, and—after 2010 and 2013—it was the third time that CHES was colocated with CRYPTO. CHES is considered to be the leading conference in the domain of embedded security, in particular the implementation and deployment aspects of security and cryptography. It aims at bridging theory and practice by bringing together attendees from industry, government agencies, and academia.