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Call for Papers: Inaugural Symposium on Vehicle Security and Privacy
(VehicleSec 2023)

Updated on 21 December 2022

A vehicle is a machine that transports people and/or cargo in one or more physical domains, such as on the ground (e.g., cars, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, buses, scooters, trains), in the air (e.g., drones, airplanes, helicopters, spacecraft), underwater (e.g., ships, boats, watercraft), and in space (e.g., spacecraft). Due to their safety-critical nature, the security and privacy of vehicles can pose direct threats to passengers, owners, operators, as well as the environment. Recent improvements in vehicle autonomy and connectivity (e.g., autonomous driving, drone delivery, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, intelligent transportation, drone swarm), have only served to exacerbate security and privacy challenges and thus require urgent attention from academia, industry, and policy-makers. To meet this critical need, the ISOC (Internet Society) VehicleSec symposium aims at bringing together an audience of university researchers, scientists, industry professionals, and government representatives to contribute new theories, technologies, and systems on any security/privacy issues related to vehicles (e.g., ground, aerial, underwater), their sub-systems (e.g., in-vehicle networks, autonomy, connectivity, human-machine interfaces), supporting infrastructures (e.g., transportation infrastructure, charging station, ground control station), and related fundamental technologies (e.g., sensing, control, AI/ML/DNN, real-time computing, edge computing, location service, simulation, digital twin, multi-agent protocol/system design, and human-machine interaction).

VehicleSec 2023 will be a hybrid event, in conjunction with the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2023 at San Diego, CA.

Community Reception. VehicleSec will host a reception as a community social event on the night of the symposium (Feb 27, 2023), with refreshments such as food and drinks.

Keynote Speech: Like previous AutoSec, we plan to have 2 keynotes, one from academia and one from industry, in order to provide a more diverse perspective of the problem space to VehicleSec attendees. We have already confirmed Prof. Kang Shin from the University of Michigan (ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, member of Korean Academy of Engineering) as our academic keynote speaker, who is world-renown for his research in embedded real-time and cyber-physical systems such as on autonomous vehicles.

Demo/Poster Session: VehicleSec will feature a demo/poster session (in-person) to allow academic, governmental, and industry participants to present posters and/or share demonstrations of their latest attacks, defenses, and security/privacy tools or systems related to vehicles.

Lightning Talk Session: The symposium will feature a Lightning Talks session with short and engaging 5-minute “live” (in-person) presentations on any topics that can be worth a timely shout-out to the VehicleSec community, which includes but not limited to emerging hot topics, preliminary research results, practical problems encountered, lessons learned, the introduction of tutorials and education materials, tips and tricks, simulators/simulations, data and visualizations (e.g., autonomous driving datasets), or other (interdisciplinary) topics related to vehicles. 

Awards: Accepted papers and demos/posters will be considered for a Best Paper Award and Best Demo/Poster Award. The winner and runner-up will receive cash prizes. In addition, a special AutoDriving Security Award, with a cash prize,will be given to one of the accepted papers to recognize and reward research that makes substantial contributions to secure today’s autonomous driving technology.

VehicleSec Travel Grants: Selected students will be provided with support to attend the VehicleSec symposium in person.

Submission Guidelines for Papers/Demos/Posters

We accept (1) regular papers of 6-8 pages, (2) short position papers or work-in-progress (WIP) papers up to 4 pages, and (3) demo/poster papers up to 1 page, all in double-column NDSS format. Page limits exclude bibliography and well-marked appendices. There is no limit on the length of the bibliography and appendices at submission time, but reviewers are not required to read any appendices so the paper should be self-contained without them. For regular papers, shorter papers won’t be penalized; thus, authors are encouraged to submit papers of appropriate length based on the research contribution.

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. Submissions should be anonymized for review, but this is not required. Demo/poster/short/WIP papers must have the prefix “Demo:”/”Poster:”/”Short:”/”WIP:” in their titles.

The submission portal for Papers/Demos/Posters is: https://submit.vehiclesec.io/

The proceedings will be published and archived by the Internet Society (ISOC).

Submission Guidelines for Lightning Talks

Please submit your Lightning Talk title and abstract (200 words or less) for full consideration via the Lightning Talk submission form below by February 3, 2023. Lightning Talk abstracts will be published on the symposium website.

https://forms.gle/XLZBeYNLyNw8d4Pa9

  • All submissions must include the presenter’s name, affiliation, and contact information.
  • Please note that the presenter must make all submissions. Submissions from PR firms will be rejected without review.
  • Time limits will be strictly enforced.
  • For additional information regarding Lightning Talks, do not hesitate to contact the Lightning Talk Chair Ming Li at [email protected].

Areas of Interest

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  • Embedded/sensor/analog/actuator security, privacy, and forensics in vehicle settings
  • Vehicle-related malware/firmware analysis
  • Secure/resilient/trustworthy/privacy-preserving perception, localization, planning, and control in autonomous/automated vehicles
  • Security/safety/robustness verification related to vehicles
  • Intra- and inter-vehicle network (e.g., CAN bus, V2X, remote operator channel) security
  • Multi-vehicle coordination/cooperation  (e.g., V2X, drone swarm) security
  • Compliance with policies (e.g., legal, security, privacy, safety, and environmental policies)
  • Secure integration of hardware and software systems for vehicles (e.g., ground, aerial)
  • Secure software/hardware updates in vehicle settings (e.g., cars, drones, airplanes)
  • Privacy challenges in vehicle settings, e.g., driver/passenger privacy, drone/car/robot spying, intellectual property stealing, etc.

Important Dates

  • Paper/Poster/Demo Submission Deadline: Anywhere-on-earth (AOE) 3 January , 10 January (firm) 2023
  • Lightning Talk Submission Deadline: 3 February 2023
  • Notification of Acceptance: 10 February 2023
  • Camera Ready Submission: 17 February 2023
  • Symposium Date: 27 February 2023
  • Community Reception Date: 27 February 2023 (at night)

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 VehicleSec 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.

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.

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.