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