Symposium Topics

Refereed paper submissions are solicited in all areas relating to systems research in security and privacy. This topic list is not meant to be exhaustive; USENIX Security is interested in all aspects of computing systems security and privacy. Papers without a clear application to security or privacy of computing systems, however, will be considered out of scope and may be rejected without full review at the discretion of the chairs.

    System security
        Operating systems security
        Distributed systems security
        Cloud computing security
    Network security
        Intrusion and anomaly detection and prevention
        Network infrastructure security
        Denial-of-service attacks and countermeasures
        Wireless security
        Analysis of network and security protocols
    Security and Privacy for Web, Mobile, and Emerging Technologies
        Web
        Mobile
        IoT
        VR/AR
        Games
    Software Security
        Malware analysis
        Forensics and diagnostics for security
        Automated security analysis of source code and binaries
        Program analysis
        Fuzzing and vulnerability discovery
    Security of ML
        Read this entire section to prevent desk rejection
        USENIX Security is a systems security venue. ML-focused contributions must be relevant to the broader systems security community
        This topic is not meant for papers that propose/evaluate/improve ML-based techniques for a security task. Such papers should select the topic most closely related to the task.
    Privacy of ML
        Read this entire section to prevent desk rejection
        USENIX Security is a systems security venue. ML-focused contributions must be relevant to the broader systems security community
        This topic is not meant for papers that propose/evaluate/improve ML-based techniques for a privacy task. Such papers should select the topic most closely related to the task.
    Privacy and Anonymity
        Privacy metrics
        Anonymity
        Privacy-preserving computation
        Privacy attacks
        Surveillance and censorship
    Human Aspects
        Usable security and privacy
        Security and privacy law, policy, and/or ethics
        Security education and training
        Understanding, measuring, quantifying, and protecting users from: information manipulation, mis/disinformation, harassment, extremism, and abuse via qualitative and quantitative methods
    Hardware security
        Secure computer architectures
        Embedded systems security
        Cyber-physical systems security
        Methods for detection of malicious or counterfeit hardware
        Side channels
        Automated security analysis of hardware designs and implementation
    Applications of cryptography
        Analysis of deployed cryptography and cryptographic protocols
        Cryptographic implementation analysis
        New cryptographic protocols with real-world applications
        Blockchains and distributed ledger security