Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ; 2021 (3):1–4

Aaron Johnson and Florian Kerschbaum Editors’ Introduction

DOI 10.2478/popets-2021-0034 second round for a total of four reviews (in a few cases, submissions received fewer or more reviews). Many articles had an external review drawn from a It is our great pleasure to introduce Issue 3 of Vol- pool of junior experts nominated by the community1. ume 2021 of the Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Further external experts were invited to review certain Technologies (PoPETs). PoPETs is a journal that pub- articles. All reviews were sent to the authors of papers lishes articles accepted to the annual Privacy Enhanc- that proceeded to the second round of review, and those ing Technologies Symposium (PETS). To contribute to authors were invited to provide a written rebuttal to the the free availability of scientific publications, PoPETs reviews. After the rebuttal period there was a discussion is published under the open-access Creative Commons among the reviewers, other members of the Editorial Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license. Board, and the Editors-in-Chief to reach a consensus PoPETS/PETS uses a hybrid conference-journal decision for each paper. One of the reviewers was then model, one that has since been adopted by many other selected to write a meta-review that summarized the conferences in the field. In this model, articles are pub- discussion and the justification for the decision. lished throughout the year at regular intervals, and the Articles submitted to this issue were reviewed by papers for the year are then presented at an annual con- the 94 members of the Editorial Board and 76 exter- ference. Reviewers can request revisions of submitted nal reviewers. The submitted articles, reviews, and dis- articles, which may then be revised and resubmitted in cussion were available to all members of the Editorial the same year. PoPETs publishes four issues per year. Board that did not have a conflict of interest with the By enabling resubmission across these issues, PoPETS authors of the article. To identify conflicts of interest, provides a high-quality peer-review process that enables the membership of the Editorial Board was published authors and reviewers to work together to produce and before submissions were opened, and authors were asked recognize significant scholarly contributions. to indicate members with whom any of the authors had The PoPETS double-blind peer-review process is a conflict. In addition, Editorial Board members were similar to other top-tier computer security publications. asked to list the authors and institutions with which The process includes initial review by the Editors-in- they have conflicts of interest. Finally, the Editors-in- Chief for rules compliance and in-scope content, writ- Chief also checked for missed conflicts. Editorial Board ten reviews by multiple independent reviewers, author members were welcome to submit articles, while the rebuttal, discussion among reviewers, and consensus de- Editors-in-Chief were precluded from doing so. cisions with disagreements resolved by the Editors-in- There were 124 submissions to this issue of PoPETs. Chief. The output of the review process is a set of re- 13 of the 124 submissions had been invited during a pre- views, a meta-review summarizing the reviewers’ opin- vious issue to resubmit after major revision, and these ions after discussion, and one of the following decisions: were reassigned to the Editorial Board members that Accept, Accept with Minor Revisions, Major Revisions, had reviewed the previous version. Additionally, 17 ar- Reject and Resubmit, and Reject. ticles that had been rejected from a previous issue were Reviewing by the Editorial Board is performed in resubmitted to the journal, and they were reassigned two rounds. In the first round, the Editors-in-Chief as- to some of the same reviewers. For all these resubmis- sign two reviewers to all papers, and at the end of the sions, the authors provided a summary of changes made round early decisions are made to reject papers that to the prior version that explained how review concerns have two reject scores (Reject or Reject and Resubmit). had been addressed. The remaining papers receive additional reviews in the Of the 124 submissions, 11 papers were accepted, and 10 were conditionally accepted subject to minor revisions. For the latter, a reviewer was assigned as a Aaron Johnson: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, E-mail: shepherd to ensure that the important points from the [email protected] Florian Kerschbaum: University of Waterloo, E-mail: flo- [email protected] 1 Nomination form: https://forms.gle/MFWa5yDgKZHz44F69 Editors’ Introduction 2 meta-review were addressed. 21 articles were ultimately – Arkady Yerukhimovich, George Washington Uni- accepted for publication in this issue. These 21 and 1 ar- versity ticle revised after being conditionally accepted for issue – Atefeh Mashatan, Ryerson University 2 form the articles published in this issue. These articles – Athina Markopoulou, University of California, will be presented at PETS 2021. Irvine The authors of 83 other articles were invited to re- – Attila Yavuz, University of South Florida submit to a future issue of PoPETs. For 23 of them, spe- – Balazs Pejo, Budapest University of Technology and cific major revisions were requested, to be reviewed by Economics the same reviewers when submitted to one of the follow- – Bogdan Carbunar, Florida International University ing two PoPETs submission deadlines. The remaining 60 – Chaya Ganesh, Indian Institute of Science articles received a decision of Reject and Resubmit (15 – Chris Clifton, Purdue University of them during the first round of review), as reviewers – Christo Wilson, Northeastern University identified needed revisions that were unlikely to be suc- – Dali Kaafar, Macquarie University cessfully addressed in a short time. 16 papers received – Damien Desfontaines, ETH Zurich / Google a decision of Reject (5 of them during the first round), – Daniel Roche, U.S. Naval Academy either due to serious deficiencies or to being on topics – Daniel Takabi, Georgia State University out of scope for PoPETs. Finally, 2 submissions were – David Evans, University of Virginia rejected by the Editors-in-Chief without review by the – Elissa Redmiles, Microsoft Research Editorial Board for being out of scope, over the page – Erman Ayday, Case Western Reserve University / limit, or non-anonymous and 2 submissions were with- Bilkent University drawn by the authors during the reviewing process. – Esfandiar Mohammadi, University of Luebeck For the 2021 volume, we continue an artifact-review – Fabian Prasser, Charite - Universitätsmedizin procedure to collect, evaluate, and distribute any ar- Berlin / Berlin Institute of Health tifacts related to accepted papers (e.g. source code, – Fabio Massacci, University of Trento datasets, machine-generated proofs, formal specifica- – Fan Zhang, Duke University tions, and build environments)2. Authors of accepted – Florentin Rochet, Universite catholique de Louvain papers are encouraged (but not obliged) to submit their – Florian Hahn, University of Twente artifacts for review by an artifact-review committee. – Florian Schaub, University of Michigan The committee performs some checks on artifact quality – Florian Tramer, Stanford University (e.g. documentation, licensing, and compilation); once – Frederik Armknecht, University of Mannheim approved, artifacts accompany the corresponding pa- – Gennie Gebhart, Electronic Frontier Foundation pers on the PETS website. – Gergely Acs, Budapest University of Technology We thank the following people for making the third and Economics issue of PoPETs Volume 2021 possible: – Ghassan Karame, NEC Laboratories – Giovanni Cherubin, Turing Institute General Chair for PETS 2021: – Igor Bilogrevic, Google – Matthew Wright, Rochester Institute of Technology – Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Radboud University, Univer- sity of Groningen – Jamie Hayes, UCL Program Committee / Editorial Board: – Jessica Staddon, Google – Abbas Razaghpanah, International Computer Sci- – Joel Reardon, University of Calgary ence Institute – Josep Domingo-Ferrer, Universitat Rovira i Virgili – Abigail Marsh, Macalester College – Julien Freudiger, Apple – Adam Groce, Reed College – Kartik Nayak, Duke University – Alan Mislove, Northeastern University – Kassem Fawaz, University of Wisconsin - Madison – Alisa Frik, International Computer Science Insti- – Luca Melis, Amazon tute, UC Berkeley – Lucas Davi, University of Duisburg Essen – Mahmood Sharif, Tel Aviv University and VMware – Marcel Keller, CSIRO’s Data61 – Mario Alvim, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2 https://petsymposium.org/artifacts.php Editors’ Introduction 3

– Markulf Kohlweiss, University of Edinburgh / Publications Chairs: IOHK – Tobias Pulls, Karlstad University – Martin Degeling, Ruhr-University Bochum – Anselme Tueno, SAP SE – Mathias Humbert, armasuisse W+T – Matt Blaze, Georgetown University – Melek Önen, EURECOM Artifact Chair: – Michelle Mazurek, University of Maryland – Cecylia Bocovich, The Tor Project – Milad Nasr, UMass Amherst – Minhui Xue, The University of Adelaide – Moti Yung, Google Video Chair: – Narseo Vallina, IMDEA Networks Institute – Jeremy Clark, Concordia University – Nataliia Bielova, INRIA – Benjamin Zhao, University of New South Wales / – Neil Gong, Duke University CSIRO Data61 – Nitesh Saxena, University of Alabama at Birming- ham – Omar Chowdhury, University of Iowa Publicity/Web Chairs: – Omkant Pandey, Stony Brook University – Kat Hanna, The Tor Project – Paolo Gasti, New York Institute of Technology – Rebekah Overdorf, EPFL – Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, IMDEA Software Institute – Peeter Laud, Cybernetica – Philipp Jovanovic, UCL Infrastructure Chairs: – Radu Sion, Stony Brook University – Roger Dingledine, The Tor Project – Rebekah Overdorf, EPFL – Ian Goldberg, University of Waterloo – Rob Jansen, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory – Roger Dingledine, The Tor Project – Ruba Abu-Salma, ICSI/UC Berkeley Sponsorship Chairs: – Ryan Henry, University of Calgary – Susan McGregor, Tow Center for Digital Journalism – Sai Teja Peddinti, Google & Columbia Journalism School – Sameer Wagh, University of California Berkeley – Steven Murdoch, University College London – Sebastian Meiser, Visa Research – Sebastien Gambs, Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM) PET Award Chairs – Sergey Gorbunov, University of Waterloo – Simone Fischer-Hübner, Karlstad University – Shrirang Mare, Western Washington University – Panagiotis (Panos) Papadimitratos, KTH – Simon Oya, University of Waterloo – Simson Garfinkel, U.S. Census Bureau – Sonia Ben Mokhtar, CNRS We thank the following shepherds: – Stefano Paraboschi, Universita degli Studi di Berg- – Julien Gamba, IMDEA Networks Institute amo – Sebastian Meiser, Visa Research – Steven Murdoch, UCL – Santiago Torres, Purdue University – Tao Wang, Simon Fraser University – Daniel Roche, U.S. Naval Academy – Theresa Stadler, EPFL – Martin Degeling, Ruhr-University Bochum – Thomas Gross, Newcastle University – Alisa Frik, International Computer Science Insti- – Tianhao Wang, Purdue University tute, UC Berkeley – Travis Mayberry, U.S. Naval Academy – Erman Ayday, Case Western Reserve University / – Veelasha Moonsamy, Ruhr University Bochum Bilkent University – Wendy Seltzer, W3C – Rob Jansen, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory – Xi He, University of Waterloo – Tao Wang, Simon Fraser University – Yang Zhang, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Informa- – Balazs Pejo, CrySyS Lab tion Security – Yixin Sun, University Of Virginia Editors’ Introduction 4

We thank the following external reviewers: – Mikhail Volkhov, University of Edinburgh – Ahmed Salem, CISPA – Mohammad Saidur Rahman, Rochester Institute of – Aisling Connolly, Worldline Technology – Akshaya Mani, University of Waterloo – Mohammad Tahaei, Uni Edinburgh – Alberto Blanco, Universitat Rovira i Virgili – Mohammed Abuhamad, Loyola University Chicago – Alexander Hicks, UCL – Moses Namara, Clemson University – Alvaro Feal, IMDEA Networks Institute / Univer- – Muhammad Ahmad Bashir, International Com- sidad Carlos III de Madrid puter Science Institute – Anselme Tueno, SAP Security Research – Navid Nasr Esfahani, University of Waterloo – Apostolos Pyrgelis, EPFL – Nils Lukas, University of Waterloo – Archita Agarwal, Brown University – Oleksii Starov, Palo Alto Networks – Armon Barton, Naval Postgraduate School – Om Dipakbhai Thakkar, Google – Aydin Abadi, University of Gloucestershire – Peter Kieseberg, St. Polten University of Applied – Bailey Kacsmar, University of Waterloo Sciences – Bargav Jayaraman, University of Virginia – Phillipp Schoppmann, Humboldt-University Berlin – Benjamin Lipp, Inria Paris – Pille Pullonen, Cybernetica AS – Benjamin VanderSloot, University of Detroit Mercy – Piyush Kumar Sharma, IIIT Delhi – Bin Ma, University of Waterloo – Platon Kotzias, NortonLifelock Research Group – Chan Nam Ngo, University of Trento – Rasoul Akhavan Mahdavi, University of Waterloo – Cheng Guo, Clemson University – Ren Zhang, Nervos – Chenghong Wang, Duke University – Ricardo Mendes, University of Coimbra – Christine Utz, Ruhr University Bochum – Richard McPherson, Google – Christoph Egger, Friedrich-Alexander-University – Ryan Wails, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Erlangen-Nuremberg – Saba Eskandarian, Stanford University – David Froelicher, EPFL – Sajin Sasy, University of Waterloo – Debabrota Basu, Inria – Santiago Torres, Purdue University – Ding Wang, Nankai University – Shawn Shan, University of Chicago – Edwin Dauber, Drexel University – Sina Shiehian, Stony Brook University – Elena Lucherini, Princeton University – Steven Englehardt, Mozilla Corporation – Gaston Pugliese, Friedrich-Alexander University – Syed Mahbub Hafiz, Indiana University Erlangen-Nuremberg – Thomas Humphries, University of Waterloo – Hooman Mohajeri Moghaddam, Princeton Univer- – Tianhao Wang, Harvard University sity – Tianyu Li, TU Delft – Inigo Querejeta-Azurmendi, Brave Research – Tobias Urban, Institute for Internet Security – Janith Weerasinghe, New York University – Vasilios Mavroudis, University College London – Jan Pennekamp, RWTH Aachen University – Vikash Sehwag, Princeton University – Jonas Böhler, SAP Security Research – Yasemin Acar, Leibniz-University Hannover – Juan Ramon Troncoso-Pastoriza, EPFL – Yongjun Zhao, Nanyang Technology University – Julien Gamba, IMDEA Networks Institute – Zijian Bao, Wuhan university – Kopo Marvin Ramokapane, University of Bristol – Laura Graves, University of Waterloo Sincerely, – Leonie Reichert, Humboldt-University Berlin Aaron Johnson and Florian Kerschbaum – Lun Wang, University of California, Berkeley Co-Editors-in-Chief of PoPETs Volume 2021 and Pro- – Masoumeh Shafieinejad, University of Waterloo gram Co-Chairs of PETS 2021 – Meisam Mohamady, CSIRO’s Data61