USENIX Security '25: Call for Papers

The 34th USENIX Security Symposium will take place on August 13–15, 2025, at the Seattle Convention Center in Seattle, WA, USA.

The USENIX Security Symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, system programmers, and others interested in the latest advances in the security and privacy of computer systems and networks.

Summary of Main Changes from Previous Editions

• Two submission cycles instead of three.
• New open science policy: Research results should be available to the public or explain why this is not possible. The artifact evaluation process is adjusted to accommodate this.
• New guidelines for ethics considerations.
• Extra page for mandatory discussion of ethics considerations and compliance with open science policy.
• Revisions are reviewed within the same submission cycle instead of the next.
• New approach to presenting accepted papers (see the public RFC about the plans for this new model).

Important Dates

There will be two submission cycles in 2025:

Cycle 1

• Paper submissions due: Wednesday, September 4, 2024
• Early reject notification: Tuesday, October 15, 2024
• Rebuttal period: November 18–25, 2024
• Notification to authors: Wednesday, December 11, 2024
• Shepherding/revision period: Thursday, December 12, 2024–Thursday, January 16, 2025
• Artifacts due for availability verification: Thursday, January 16, 2025
• Shepherding/revision author notification: Thursday, January 23, 2025
• Final papers due: Thursday, January 30, 2025

Cycle 2

• Paper submissions due: Wednesday, January 22, 2025
• Early reject notification: Tuesday, March 4, 2025
• Rebuttal period: April 7–14, 2025
• Notification to authors: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
• Shepherding/revision period: Thursday, May 1, 2025–Thursday, May 29, 2025
• Artifacts due for availability verification: Thursday, May 29, 2025
• Shepherding/revision author notification: Thursday, June 5, 2025
• Final papers due: Thursday, June 12, 2025

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.

• System security
  • Operating systems security
  • Web security
  • Mobile 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
• Software analyses
  • Malware analysis
  • Forensics and diagnostics for security
  • Automated security analysis of source code and binaries
  • Program analysis
  • Fuzzing and vulnerability discovery
• ML and AI security and privacy
  • ML and AI applications to security and privacy
  • Privacy risks in ML and AI
  • Security of AI
• Data-driven security and measurement studies
  • Measurements of fraud, malware, spam
  • Measurements of human behavior and security
• Privacy
  • Privacy metrics
  • Anonymity
  • Web and mobile privacy
  • Privacy-preserving computation
  • Privacy attacks
• Usable security and privacy
  • User studies related to security and privacy
  • Human-centered security and privacy design
• Formal methods and language-based security
• 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
• Surveillance and censorship
• Social issues and security
  • Security and privacy law and policy
  • Information manipulation, misinformation, and disinformation
  • Protecting and understanding at-risk users
  • Emerging online threats, harassment, extremism, and abuse
• 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
• Meta-science in Security and Privacy
  • Meta-science, or the study of scientific research itself, aims to enhance the efficiency, quality, and outcomes of research activities in our community. Submissions in this broad topic should focus on evaluations of research practices, replicability/reproducibility, ethics, research methodologies, data transparency, and peer-review processes.
  • Contributions should extend beyond analysis, aiming to influence future research practices.
  • Replication and Reproduction: Contributions to this sub-topic should primarily consist of studies that verify, refute, or refine prior technical results or widely-held beliefs. We encourage submissions that not only replicate studies but also offer meta-analyses that assess the replicability of research. Additionally, while replication studies often replicate original findings, we also value novel investigations into why certain studies fail to replicate. Papers that critically examine the conditions under which replication is feasible, or those that propose innovative methods to enhance the reliability of scientific findings, are especially welcome.
• Systematization of Knowledge (SoK)
  • SoK papers go beyond simply summarizing previous research; they include a thorough examination and analysis of existing approaches, identify gaps and limitations, and offer insights or new perspectives on a given, major research area.
  • SoK submissions should be prefixed with "SoK:".

Research Ethics

Authors of all submissions must consider and discuss the ethics of their work. Papers must include a discussion of ethics and an argument for how their full research and publication process was ethical. Failure to do so may result in rejection.

Open Science

Authors are expected to openly share their research artifacts by default. If artifacts cannot be shared, a detailed justification must be provided. Adherence to the open science policy needs to be explicitly discussed in the paper.

Artifact Evaluation

Artifact evaluation will take place in two phases: availability after paper acceptance and before final papers are due; functionality and reproducibility after final papers are due. Authors of accepted papers are encouraged to register their artifacts.

See the Call for Artifacts for more information.

New Approach to Presentation of Papers

Accepted papers will be presented in various formats, including longer talks (tentatively 15 minutes), shorter presentations (tentatively 30 seconds to 1 minute), posters, and optional pre-recorded video presentations.

Submission Policies and Instructions

See the USENIX Security '25 Submission Policies and Instructions page for details.

Symposium Organizers

Program Co-Chairs

• Lujo Bauer, Carnegie Mellon University
• Giancarlo Pellegrino, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security

Program Vice Co-Chairs

• Giulia Fanti, Carnegie Mellon University
• Marco Guarnieri, IMDEA Software Institute
• Olya Ohrimenko, The University of Melbourne
• Cristina Onete, Université de Limoges, XLIM, and CNRS 7252
• Brad Reaves, North Carolina State University
• Nuno Santos, INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon
• Ben Stock, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
• Yuan Tian, University of California, Los Angeles
• Daniel Votipka, Tufts University

(A full list of Program Committee members is available on the conference website.)