NDSS Symposium 2026: Call for Papers, Artifacts, Posters, and Workshops

The Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2026, along with co-located workshops, will take place in San Diego, CA, from February 23 to 27, 2026.

This symposium is a top venue that fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. 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 primarily 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.

Publication

All 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.

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. Authors are 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 these new requirements would be grounds for desk rejection.

Important Dates

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

Summer Cycle

• Paper submission deadline: April 23, 2025
• Early reject/Round 2 notification and Round 1 reviews: May 28, 2025
• Author rebuttal: June 18 - June 20, 2025
• Interactive discussion with reviewers: June 18 - June 25, 2025
• Author notification: July 2, 2025
• Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision: July 30, 2025
• Author notification for Major Revision: August 13, 2025
• Camera Ready deadline: September 10, 2025

Fall Cycle

• Paper submission deadline: August 6, 2025
• Early reject/Round 2 notification and Round 1 reviews: September 17, 2025
• Author rebuttal: October 8 - October 10, 2025
• Interactive discussion with reviewers: October 8 - October 15, 2025
• Author notification: October 22, 2025
• Resubmission of Major Revision papers, Minor Revision decision: November 19, 2025
• Author notification for Major Revision: December 3, 2025
• Camera Ready deadline: December 17, 2025

Review Process

NDSS Symposium 2026 will have two review cycles: a summer submission cycle and a fall submission cycle. For each submission, one of the following decisions will be made:

• Accept: Accepted for publication and presentation.
• Minor Revision: Accepted if minor revisions are made and deemed satisfactory by shepherds.
• Major Revision: Considered promising but needs additional work. Authors may revise and resubmit within six weeks for a second review based on specified revision tasks. A paper may undergo at most one major revision.
• Reject: Not allowed to be resubmitted to NDSS Symposium 2026.

The review process happens in two rounds for each cycle. Round 1 identifies papers for further review and discussion. Round 2 selects papers for acceptance. Both cycles include an early notification sharing Round 1 reviews and indicating if the paper proceeds to Round 2. Authors of papers proceeding to Round 2 will have an opportunity to rebut reviews and interact with reviewers.

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

Artifact Evaluation

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

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

Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) Papers

Papers that focus on the systematization of knowledge (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 authors may choose to do so. These papers go beyond summarizing previous research; 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 primarily focuses on network and systems security. The Program Committee seeks papers with a clear relation to real systems, networks, and their applications. Papers with questionable fit may be desk rejected without reviews. Examples of topic concerns include (but are not limited to):

• Papers focusing on theoretical cryptography without implementation or evaluation on real systems.
• Papers focusing on mathematical proof without implementation/evaluation.
• Papers with contributions primarily in another field (e.g., AI, ML) without substantial security/privacy novelty.
• Papers without any security or privacy contribution (e.g., optimizing network performance).

Paper Formatting

• Technical papers must not exceed 13 pages, excluding the “Ethics Considerations” section, references, or appendices.
• Papers must be written in English.
• Formatted for US letter size (not A4) paper in a two-column layout.
• Columns no more than 9.25 in. high and 3.5 in. wide.
• Text must be in Times font, 10-point or larger, with 11-point or larger line spacing.
• Authors must use the NDSS templates (Note: 2025 templates, 2026 ones to be published soon).
• Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf).
• 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 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, authors may discuss ethical risks and mitigation steps. If no ethical considerations are believed to exist, this section is not necessary.

Research can potentially lead to adverse outcomes. 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, authors should disclose if an ethics review (e.g., IRB approval) was conducted, and discuss how ethical and legal concerns were addressed. IRB exemptions may not be sufficient. If the paper reports a potentially high-impact vulnerability, authors should report or discuss their plan for responsible disclosure. An Ethics Review Board (ERB) will check flagged papers. Authors are encouraged to review the Menlo Report for general ethical guidelines. 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 (Double-Blind Reviewing)

NDSS Symposium implements a double-blind reviewing process.

• Author names and affiliations should not appear in the paper.
• Authors should make a reasonable effort not to reveal their identities or institutional affiliations in the text, figures, photos, links, or other data.
• Authors’ prior work must be referred to in the third person; if this is not feasible, the references should be blinded.
• Submissions violating 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.
• 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. Conflicts include:

• Perpetual conflict: Advisors and advisees (regardless of graduation date).
• Institutional relationship: Authors and PC members with an institutional relationship.
• Recent professional collaborations: (past 2 years, regardless of publication/funding).
• Close personal relationships.

PC members, including chairs, with a conflict of interest with a paper will be excluded from its evaluation. Other cases (grey areas) should be brought to the PC Co-Chairs’ attention prior to the submission deadline.

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. Authors with concerns about fair treatment should contact the chairs directly with convincing arguments.

Use of Generative AI

The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence tools (text, images, or other data) is permitted for paper preparation under these conditions:

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.
3. The authors accept responsibility for the veracity and correctness of all material in their paper, including any AI-generated material.

Disclosure Requirements

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:

• If entire (sub)sections (including tables, graphs, images, etc.) were AI-generated, authors must disclose which sections and which tools and tool versions were used (e.g., via an Appendix describing usage, specific tools/versions, prompts, and post-generation editing).
• If the amount of text generated is small (limited to phrases or a few sentences), a citation or footnote to the relevant section is sufficient, with a general disclaimer in the Acknowledgements section.
• If generative AI tools are used only to edit and improve the quality of human-generated existing text (e.g., for spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement), disclosure is not necessary.

Submissions of Papers

• Summer review cycle submission site: https://ndss26-summer.hotcrp.com/
• Fall review cycle submission site: https://ndss26-fall.hotcrp.com/

Questions?

Contact the PC chair at ndss-pc-chair@elists.isoc.org.