The Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF) is an annual conference for researchers in computer security. CSF seeks papers on foundational aspects of computer security, such as formal security models, relationships between security properties and defenses, principled techniques and tools for design and rigorous analysis of security mechanisms, as well as their application to practice. While CSF welcomes submissions beyond the topics listed below, the main focus of CSF is foundational security and privacy. Papers lacking foundational aspects risk desk rejection without further evaluation of their merits; contact the PC chairs when in doubt.

CSF was created in 1988 as a workshop of the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Security and Privacy, in response to a 1986 essay by Don Good entitled “The Foundations of Computer Security—We Need Some.” The meeting became a “symposium” in 2007, along with a policy for open, increased attendance. Over the past two decades, many seminal papers and techniques have been presented first at CSF. For more details on the history of the symposium, visit CSF’s home.

Proceedings will be published by the IEEE Computer Society Press and will be available at the symposium. Some small number of papers will be selected by the Program Committee as "Distinguished Papers".

Submission Server

Submit papers at https://hotcrp.csf2026.ieee-security.org/.

Topics

New results in security and privacy are welcome. We also encourage challenge/vision papers, which may describe open questions and raise fundamental concerns about security and privacy. Possible topics for all papers include, but are not limited to:

access control
accountability
anonymity
attack models
authentication
blockchains and smart contracts
cloud security
cryptography
data provenance
data and system integrity
database security
decidability and complexity
decision theory
distributed systems security
electronic voting
embedded systems security
forensics
formal methods and verification
hardware-based security
information flow control
intrusion detection
language-based security
mobile security
network security
privacy
security and privacy aspects of machine learning
security and privacy for the Internet of Things
security architecture
security metrics
security policies
security protocols
software security
socio-technical security
trust management
usable security
web security