NDSS Symposium 2021 Call for Papers

Areas/Topics 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 senior 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 should be written in English. Papers must not exceed 13 pages, excluding references and appendices. 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 2021 templates are not available yet. To get started, however, you can use the NDSS 2020 templates available at https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2020/templates/ as the NDSS 2021 ones will be very similar. 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 major 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 advisees, 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 a 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 (opening on Thu Apr 16, 2020) is https://ndss21-summer.hotcrp.com. 

The submission site for the fall review cycle (opening on Fri Jul 17, 2020) is https://ndss21-fall.hotcrp.com.

PC chair contact: [email protected]

Acknowledgments 

We thank the PC Co-Chairs of ACM CCS’19, USENIX Security’19, and NDSS’20 for allowing us to reuse certain text in their CFPs.