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