NDSS Symposium 2026 Conference Information
(https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2026/)
San Diego, CA, USA
2/23/26 - 2/27/26

Submission Dates

NDSS Symposium 2026 has two submission cycles:

Summer Cycle
    Paper Submission: 4/23/25

Fall Cycle
    Paper Submission: 8/6/25

Note: All deadlines are on Wednesdays at 11:59 PM AoE (UTC-12). Each
author can submit a maximum of six (6) submissions per cycle, 12
total.

Call for Papers (Full Text)

The Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium is a top
venue that fosters information exchange among researchers and
practitioners of network and distributed system security. The NDSS
Symposium 2026 and co-located workshops will take place in San Diego,
CA, from 23 to 27 February 2026. The target audience includes everyone
interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system
security, with a focus on 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 Symposium 2026. 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 on the first page of the paper. The
authors are thus 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.

Summary of New Guidelines

    Bulk submission limitation: Each author can be listed on a maximum
    of six (6) submissions per cycle (12 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.

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 six (6) submissions per cycle, 12
total. That is, an author cannot be listed on more than six
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.

Important Dates

All deadlines are on Wednesdays, and all are 11:59 PM AoE (UTC-12).

Summer Cycle

    Wed, 4/23/25: Paper submission deadline
    Wed, 5/28/25: Early reject/Round 2 notification and Round 1 reviews
    Wed, 6/18/25 to Fri, 6/20/25: Author rebuttal
    Wed, 6/18/25 to Wed, 6/25/25: Interactive discussion with reviewers
    Wed, 7/2/25: Author notification
    Wed, 7/30/25: Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision
    Wed, 8/13/25: Author notification for Major Revision
    Wed, 9/10/25: Camera Ready deadline

Fall Cycle

    Wed, 8/6/25: Paper submission deadline
    Wed, 9/17/25: Early reject/Round 2 notification and Round 1 reviews
    Wed, 10/8/25 to Fri, 10/10/25: Author rebuttal
    Wed, 10/8/25 to Wed, 10/15/25: Interactive discussion with reviewers
    Wed, 10/22/25: Author notification
    Wed, 11/19/25: Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision
    Wed, 12/3/25: Author notification for Major Revision
    Wed, 12/17/25: Camera Ready deadline

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)
    Integrating security in network protocols (e.g., routing, naming,
       and management)
    Mobile and wireless network security
    Network security policy implementation, deployment, and management
    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 operating systems, hypervisors, and virtual machines
    Security and privacy of systems based on machine learning,
      federated learning, AI, and large language models
    Security for cloud/edge computing
    Security for cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous vehicles,
      industrial control systems)
    Security for emerging networks (e.g., smart homes, IoT, body-area
      networks, VANETs)
    Security for future Internet architectures and designs (e.g.,
      Software-Defined Networking, Intent-Based 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, fake news/disinformation), web
       security and privacy
    Software/firmware/hardware security analysis, customization, and extensions
    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

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:

    Provide concrete steps for improving the work;
    Separate reviewer opinion from demonstrable technical weaknesses; and
    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. 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 may optionally include an "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 may optionally include an "Ethics Considerations" section
immediately preceding the reference section. In this section, the
authors may discuss if they believe the work poses any ethical risk
and the steps that are taken to mitigate such risk. If the authors
believe that their work does not pose any ethical considerations, this
section is not necessary.

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.

Submissions of Papers

The submission site for the summer review cycle is at
https://ndss26-summer.hotcrp.com/.

The submission site for the fall review cycle is at
https://ndss26-fall.hotcrp.com/.

Questions? Contact the PC chair at ndss-pcchairs@ndsssymposium.org.