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NDSS Symposium 2024 Call for Papers

The 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 network and distributed system security. The NDSS 2024 workshops and symposia will take place in San Diego, CA, from 26 February to 1 March 2024. 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.

This call solicits technical papers. 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 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 2024. 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 2024 will have two review cycles: a summer submission cycle and a fall submission cycle. 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 any 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 2024, with appropriate revisions and within six weeks 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 upon notification. A revised paper will be accepted to NDSS 2024 if it satisfactorily fulfills the revision tasks. A paper may undergo at most one major revision for NDSS 2024.
  • Reject: Papers in this category are not allowed to be resubmitted to NDSS 2024.

The review process will happen in two rounds for each submission cycle. The goal of Round 1 is to identify the papers that warrant further reviews and discussion among the technical program committee members. The goal of Round 2 is to select those papers that will be accepted and appear at the conference.  Both review cycles will have an early notification during which the Round 1 reviews will be shared along with the information whether the paper is early rejected or will proceed to Round 2. Authors of papers proceeding to Round 2 will have an opportunity to rebut the reviews and to interact with the reviewers during an interactive discussion phase.

Authors of accepted papers must ensure that their papers will be presented at the conference according to the conference participation policy. 

Authors of accepted papers are strongly encouraged to open-source their artifacts and to submit them for an artifact evaluation. Please check the Artifact Evaluation page for details.

Areas/Topics of Interest

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

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

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, networks, and their applications. For instance, a paper that makes significant contributions in an area such as theoretical cryptography but that fails to demonstrably tie those advances to real systems is unlikely to be accepted.

Important Dates

Summer Review Cycle:

  • Wed, 19 Apr 2023: Paper submission deadline
  • Fri, 19 May 2023: Round 1 reviews and early reject notification
  • Mon, 12 Jun to Wed, 14 Jun 2023: Author rebuttal
  • Mon, 12 Jun to Mon, 19 Jun 2023: Interactive discussion with reviewers
  • Wed, 21 Jun 2023: Author notification
  • Wed, 2 Aug 2023: Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision
  • Wed, 16 Aug 2023: Author notification for Major Revision
  • Wed, 30 Aug 2023: Camera Ready deadline

Fall Review Cycle:

  • Wed, 28 Jun 2023: Paper submission deadline
  • Fri, 4 Aug 2023: Round 1 reviews and early reject notification
  • Mon, 4 Sep to Wed, 6 Sep 2023: Author rebuttal
  • Mon, 4 Sep to Mon, 11 Sep 2023: Interactive discussion with reviewers
  • Wed, 13 Sep 2023: Author notification
  • Wed, 1 Nov 2023: Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision
  • Wed, 15 Nov 2023: Author notification for Major Revision
  • Wed, 29 Nov 2023: Camera Ready deadline

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 provided for their submission. 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 must be 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 while the paper is under review unless approved by the Program Chairs. Publishing a technical report on a preprint repository, such as arXiv, while not encouraged, is not forbidden.

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 excluded from the evaluation of that paper.

The PC Co-Chairs are not allowed to submit papers 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

Below are the links for the submission sites for both the summer review cycle and the fall review cycle:

Summer review cycle submission site: https://ndss24-summer.hotcrp.com/
Fall review cycle submission site: https://ndss24-fall.hotcrp.com/

PC chair contact: [email protected]