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NDSS Symposium 2023 Call for Papers

Call for Papers is now closed.

The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) is a top venue that fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of computer, network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. A major goal is to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of practical security technologies.

Technical papers and panel proposals are solicited. Authors are encouraged to write the abstract and introduction of their paper in a way that makes the results accessible and compelling to a general computer-security researcher. All submissions will be reviewed by the Program Committee and accepted submissions will be published by the Internet Society in the Proceedings of NDSS 2023. The Proceedings will be made freely accessible from the Internet Society web pages. Furthermore, permission to freely reproduce all or parts of papers for noncommercial purposes is granted provided that copies bear the Internet Society notice included in the first page of the paper. The authors are therefore free to post the camera-ready versions of their papers on their personal pages and within their institutional repositories. Reproduction for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited and requires prior consent.

Paper Submission Information

NDSS will have two review cycles in 2023: a Summer submission period and a fall submission period. The full list of important dates for each session is listed below. All submissions must be received by 11:59 PM AoE (UTC-12) on the day of the corresponding deadline.

For each submission to one of the two review cycles, one of the following decisions will be made:

  • Accept: Papers in this category will be accepted for publication in the proceedings and presentation at the conference.
  • Minor Revision: Papers in this category will be accepted for publication in the proceedings and presentation at the conference, if and only if they undergo a minor revision and the revision is determined satisfactory by their shepherd(s).
  • Major Revision: Papers in this category are considered promising but need additional work (e.g., new implementations, experiments, and/or proofs). Authors may choose to revise and resubmit such papers to NDSS 2023, with appropriate revisions and within about 45 days after notification (see specific deadlines below). The revision and second-review of “Major Revision” papers will be based on a list of “revision tasks” clearly specified by the original reviewers and conveyed to authors in the notification. A revised paper will be accepted to NDSS 2023, if it satisfactorily fulfills the revision tasks. A paper may undergo at most one major revision for NDSS 2023.
  • Reject: Papers in this category are not allowed to be resubmitted to NDSS 2023.

Authors of accepted papers must ensure that their papers will be presented at the conference.

Important Dates

Summer Review Cycle:

  • Fri May 13, 2022: Paper submission deadline
  • Fri Jun 17, 2022: Early reject notification
  • Tue Jul 19 to Wed Jul 20, 2022: Author rebuttal
  • Fri Jul 22 Wed Jul 27, 2022: Author notification
  • Mon Sep 5, 2022: Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision
  • Thu Sep 22, 2022: Author notification for Major Revision
  • Thu Oct 20, 2022: Camera Ready deadline

Fall Review Cycle:

  • Fri Jul 29, 2022: Paper submission deadline
  • Fri Sep  2, 2022: Early reject notification
  • Mon Oct 17 — Tue Oct 18: Wed Sept 28 – Sun Oct 02: Author rebuttal
  • Fri Oct 21, 2022: Author notification
  • Mon Dec  5, 2022: Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision
  • Thu Dec 22, 2022: Author notification for Major Revision
  • Mon Jan 16, 2023: Camera Ready deadline

NDSS 2023 Workshops and Symposium: February 2023 (exact dates TBC)

Areas of Interest

Submissions are solicited in, but not limited to, the following areas:

  • Anti-malware techniques: detection, analysis, and prevention
  • Cyber-crime defense and forensics (e.g., anti-phishing, anti-blackmailing, anti-fraud techniques)
  • Security for future Internet architectures and designs (e.g., Software-Defined Networking)
  • Implementation, deployment and management of network security policies
  • Integrating security in network protocols (e.g., routing, naming, and management)
  • Cyber attack (e.g., APTs, botnets, DDoS) prevention, detection, investigation, and response
  • Software/firmware analysis, customization, and transformation for systems security
  • Privacy and anonymity in networks and distributed systems
  • Security and privacy for blockchains and cryptocurrencies
  • Public key infrastructures, key management, certification, and revocation
  • Security for cloud/edge computing
  • Security and privacy of mobile/smartphone platforms
  • Security for cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous vehicles, industrial control systems)
  • Security for emerging networks (e.g., home networks, IoT, body-area networks, VANETs)
  • Security for large-scale, critical infrastructures (e.g., electronic voting, smart grid)
  • Security and privacy of systems based on machine learning and AI
  • Security of Web-based applications and services (e.g., social networking, crowd-sourcing)
  • Special problems and case studies: e.g., tradeoffs between security and efficiency, usability, cost, and ethics
  • Usable security and privacy
  • Trustworthy Computing software and hardware to secure networks and systems

A special note on “fit” for all submissions: NDSS is primarily a venue focusing on network and systems security. As such, the Program Committee will be looking for papers that have a clear relation to real systems and applications. For instance, a paper that makes significant contributions in an area such as cryptography but that fails to demonstrably tie those advances to real systems is unlikely to be accepted.

Review Task Force

The Program Committee (PC) has an exceedingly difficult job that demands, collectively, many thousands of hours of volunteered effort. The goal of NDSS is to not only to select the submissions that are ready for presentation at this venue, but also to assist the authors of rejected papers in improving their work as much as possible.

To assist in this process, we are creating a group of select PC members who will read reviews across many papers and ensure that all feedback achieves the following goals: 1) Provide concrete steps for improving the work; 2) Separate reviewer opinion from demonstrable technical weakness; and 3) Provide clear citation to work when claims of novelty are raised. While we make no claims that these changes will make the peer review process perfect (i.e., very good papers may still not be selected), we believe that this will help to improve the process.

Paper Formatting

Technical papers submitted for NDSS must not exceed 13 pages, excluding references or appendices and must be written in English. Papers must be formatted for US letter size (not A4) paper in a two-column layout, with columns no more than 9.25 in. high and 3.5 in. wide. The text must be in Times font, 10-point or larger, with 11-point or larger line spacing. Authors must use the NDSS templates. The NDSS 2023 templates are available at https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2023-templates/. Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf). Authors should pay special attention to unusual fonts, images, and figures that might create problems for reviewers. Documents should render correctly in Adobe Reader when printed in black and white.

Double and Concurrent Submissions

Technical papers must not substantially overlap with papers that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to a journal or a conference/workshop with proceedings. Double-submission will result in immediate rejection. The Program Committee may share information with other conference chairs and journal editors so as to detect such cases.

Ethical Considerations

If a paper relates to human subjects, analyzes data derived from human subjects, may put humans at risk, or might have other ethical implications or introduce legal issues of potential concern to the NDSS community, authors should disclose if an ethics review (e.g., IRB approval) was conducted, and discuss in the paper how ethical and legal concerns were addressed. If the paper reports a potentially high-impact vulnerability the authors should discuss their plan for responsible disclosure. The chairs will contact the authors in case of concerns. The Program Committee reserves the right to reject a submission if insufficient evidence was presented that ethical or relevant legal concerns were appropriately addressed.

Anonymous Submissions

NDSS implements a double-blind reviewing process. Author names and affiliations should not appear in the paper. The authors should make a reasonable effort not to reveal their identities or institutional affiliation in the text, figures, photos, links, or other data that is contained in the paper. Authors’ prior work should be preferably referred to in the third person; if this is not feasible, the references should be blinded. Submissions that violate these requirements will be rejected without review. The list of authors cannot be changed after the acceptance decision is made unless approved by the Program Chairs.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors and Program Committee members are required to indicate any conflict of interest and its nature. Advisors and those that they are advising, as well as authors and PC members with an institutional relationship are considered to share a conflict of interest. Professional collaborations (irrespective of whether they resulted in publication or funding) that occurred in the past 2 years and close personal relationships equally constitute a conflict of interest. PC members, including chairs, that have a conflict of interest with a paper, will be entirely excluded from the evaluation of that paper.

The PC Co-Chairs are not allowed to submit to the conference.

A Special Note on “Fake Conflicts”: Declaring conflicts of interest to avoid certain (otherwise non-conflicting) PC members is not allowed and can constitute grounds for rejection. The PC Chairs reserve the right to request additional explanation for any declared conflict. If authors have concerns about the fair treatment of their submissions, they should instead contact the chairs and provide convincing arguments for any special consideration that they are requesting.

Submissions of Papers

The submission site for the summer review cycle is: https://ndss23-summer.hotcrp.com/

The submission site for the fall review cycle is: https://ndss23-fall.hotcrp.com/

PC chair contact: [email protected]