NDSS Symposium 2026 Call for Papers

Summary of New Guidelines

• Abstract Registration: The title and abstract of each submission must be submitted by the deadline (1 week before the full submission deadline).
• Bulk submission limitation: Each author can be listed on a maximum of four (4) submissions per cycle (8 total).
• Authors cannot be added to a submission at any point for any reason after the submission deadline.
• Wide advertisement of the paper during the review process is disallowed.
• Major overlap between a rejected paper from the summer cycle and a submission to the fall cycle is disallowed.
• Each submission must include a mandatory section on “Ethics Considerations”.

Failure to meet the new requirements would be grounds for desk rejection.

Paper Submission Information

NDSS Symposium 2026 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 Symposium 2026, 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 the authors upon notification. A revised paper will be accepted to NDSS 2026 if it satisfactorily fulfills the revision tasks. A paper may undergo at most one major revision for NDSS 2026.
• Reject: Papers in this category are not allowed to be resubmitted to NDSS Symposium 2026.

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 on 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. 

Bulk Submission Limitation

Each author can submit a maximum of four (4) submissions per cycle, eight (8) total. That is, an author cannot be listed on more than four submissions per cycle. We encourage the authors to select their highest-quality papers for submission to NDSS Symposium 2026.

Artifact Evaluation

Authors of accepted papers are strongly encouraged to open-source their artifacts and to submit them for an artifact evaluation. The details of the artifact evaluation will be released on the NDSS Symposium website.

Areas/Topics of Interest

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

Papers that focus on the systematization of knowledge (called SoK-papers at other venues) are within the scope of NDSS Symposium, particularly if they provide new insights and compelling evidence. Such papers do NOT need to be prefixed with “SoK:”, but the authors may choose to do so. Such papers go beyond summarizing previous research (like in surveys); they also include a thorough examination and analysis of existing approaches, identify gaps and limitations, offer insights or new perspectives on a given, major research area, and may also involve new experiments to replicate and compare previous solutions.

Topic Fit

NDSS Symposium 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. Papers that have questionable fit to NDSS Symposium will be pre-filtered by a select sub-committee on “Topic Concerns” and may be desk rejected without reviews. Examples of topic concerns include, but are not limited to:

• Papers with focus on theoretical cryptography but without implementation or evaluation on real systems
• Papers with focus on mathematical proof without implementation/evaluation
• Papers with contributions primarily in another field: AI, ML, etc.
• Papers without any security or privacy contribution; e.g. optimizing network performance

Review Goals

The Program Committee (PC) has an exceedingly difficult job that demands, collectively, many thousands of hours of volunteered effort. The goal of NDSS Symposium is 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 aim for the following goals as central parts of the review feedback:

1. Provide concrete steps for improving the work;
2. Separate reviewer opinion from demonstrable technical weaknesses; and
3. Provide clear citations to work when claims of novelty are raised.

We may be creating a review task force to support this by selecting a group of PC members who will read reviews across many papers and ensure that all feedback achieves these goals. While we make no claims that this 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 Symposium must not exceed 13 pages, excluding the “Ethics Considerations” section, 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 (note that these are 2025 templates, and the 2026 ones will be published soon). 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.

Each paper must include a mandatory “Ethics Considerations” section immediately preceding the reference section. See more details in the Ethical Considerations section below.

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-submissions will result in immediate rejection. The Program Committee may share information with other conference chairs and journal editors to detect such cases. Major overlap between a rejected paper from the first cycle and a submission to the second cycle is disallowed and will be grounds for desk rejection.

Ethical Considerations

Each paper must include a mandatory “Ethics Considerations” section immediately preceding the reference section. In this section, the authors must discuss if they believe the work poses any ethical risk and the steps that are taken to mitigate such risk. Even if the authors believe that their work does not pose any ethical considerations, the section must be included and statements to such effect must be made.

Research can potentially lead to adverse outcomes. Individuals or organizations may experience negative consequences during the research process, immediately following publication, or in the future. Authors must proactively anticipate and address potential negative consequences of both conducting and publishing their research. Submissions may be rejected regardless of scientific merit if they fail to adequately address ethical concerns. 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. IRB exemptions may not be sufficient grounds for proper mitigation of ethical concerns. If the paper reports a potentially high-impact vulnerability, the authors should report or at least discuss their plan for responsible disclosure. The chairs will contact the authors in case of concerns. An Ethics Review Board (ERB), consisting of TPC members, will check papers flagged by reviewers as potentially including ethically fraught research. Authors are encouraged to review the Menlo Report for general ethical guidelines for computer and information security research. 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 Symposium 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 affiliations 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. Authors should refrain from broadly advertising their results and may not contact TPC members regarding their submitted work. Please contact the PC chairs if you have questions or concerns. In addition, new authors cannot be added to any submission for any reason after the submission deadline.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors and Program Committee members are required to indicate any conflict of interest and its nature. Advisors and advisees are perpetually conflicted (regardless of graduation date).  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 also 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. Other cases (grey areas) should be brought to the PC Co-Chairs’ attention prior to the submission deadline.

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.

Use of Generative AI

The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence, i.e., tools capable of generating text, images, or other data using generative models, often in response to prompts, is permitted for paper preparation as long as (1) the result does not plagiarize, misrepresent, or falsify content, (2) the resulting work in its totality is an accurate representation of the authors’ underlying work and novel intellectual contributions and is not primarily the result of the tools’ generative capabilities, and (3) the authors accept responsibility for the veracity and correctness of all material in their paper, including any AI-generated material.

The use of generative AI software tools must be disclosed as part of the paper submission. The level of disclosure should be commensurate with the proportion of new text or content generated by these tools. If entire (sub)sections of a paper, including tables, graphs, images, and other content were AI-generated, the authors must disclose which sections and which tools and tool versions were used to generate those sections (e.g., by preparing an Appendix that describes the use, specific tools and versions, the text of the prompts provided as input, and any post-generation editing). If the amount of text being generated is small (limited to phrases or a few sentences), then it would be sufficient to add a citation or a footnote to the relevant section of the submission utilizing the system(s) and include a general disclaimer in the Acknowledgements section. If generative AI software tools are only used to edit and improve the quality of human-generated existing text in much the same way as one would use a basic word processing system to correct spelling or grammar or use a typing assistant (like Grammarly) to improve spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, it is not necessary to disclose such usage of these tools in the paper.