Book excerpt: Crypto '90 marked the tenth anniversary of the Crypto conferences held at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The conference was held from August 11 to August 15, 1990 and was sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research, in cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy and the Department of Computer Science of the University of California at Santa Barbara. 227 participants from twenty countries around the world. Crypto '90 attracted Roughly 35% of attendees were from academia, 45% from industry and 20% from government. The program was intended to provide a balance between the purely theoretical and the purely practical aspects of cryptography to meet the needs and diversified interests of these various groups. The overall organization of the conference was superbly handled by the general chairperson Sherry McMahan. All of the outstanding features of Crypto, which we have come to expect over the years, were again present and, in addition to all of this, she did a magnificent job in the preparation of the book of abstracts. This is a crucial part of the program and we owe her a great deal of thanks.