NDSS 2021 Call for Papers
https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss-2021/call-for-papers/

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 2021. 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

Submission Model: NDSS will have two review cycles in 2021: the first
(Summer) with a submission deadline of April 30, 2020, and the second
(Fall) with a submission deadline of July 17, 2020. 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 shepherds.

    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 2021, 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 2021, if it satisfactorily
    fulfills the revision tasks. A paper may undergo at most one major
    revision for NDSS 2021.

    Reject: Papers in this category are not allowed to be resubmitted
    to NDSS 2021.

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

Important Dates
Summer Review Cycle:

    Thu Apr 16, 2020: Submission site opens for summer review cycle
    Thu Apr 30, 2020: Full submission deadline for technical papers 
    Mon Jun 15, 2020: Early reject notification for submissions
       rejected in the first round
    Tue Jul 14, 2020: Author rebuttal starts
    Fri Jul 17, 2020: Author rebuttal ends
    Fri Jul 24, 2020: Author notification of acceptance/minor
       revision/major revision/rejection
    Mon Sep 07, 2020: Resubmission of Major Revision papers
    Wed Oct 07, 2020: Author notification for Major Revision papers
    Wed Nov 04, 2020: Camera Ready deadline

Fall Review Cycle:

    Fri Jul 03, 2020: Submission site opens for fall review cycle
    Fri Jul 17, 2020: Full submission deadline for technical papers 
    Mon Aug 31, 2020: Early reject notification for submissions
       rejected in the first round
    Tue Sep 29, 2020: Author rebuttal starts
    Fri Oct 02, 2020: Author rebuttal ends
    Fri Oct 16, 2020: Author notification of acceptance/minor
      revision/major revision/rejection
    Mon Nov 30, 2020: Resubmission of Major Revision papers + Minor
       Revision decision
    Thu Dec 17, 2020: Author notification for Major Revision papers
    Thu Dec 31, 2020: Camera Ready deadline

NDSS 2021 Workshops and Symposium

February 21-24, 2021 — San Diego, CA 
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 03,
2020) is https://ndss21-fall.hotcrp.com.

PC chair contact: ndss-pc-chair@elists.isoc.org

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.