Call for Papers

The 34th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) seeks submissions presenting novel contributions related to all real-world aspects of computer security and privacy. Theoretical papers must make a convincing case for the relevance of their results to practice. 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 computer-security researcher. In particular, authors should bear in mind that anyone on the program committee may be asked to review any paper.

CCS has two review cycles in 2027. For each submission, one of the following decisions will be made:

• Accept: Papers in this category will be accepted for publication in the proceedings and presentation at the conference, possibly after making minor changes with the oversight of a shepherd.
• Minor revision: Papers in this category are considered to be promising but need some minor additional work (e.g., minor experiments, proofs to minor lemmas). Authors will be given the opportunity to revise such papers for inclusion in the same cycle, in which case they should clearly explain in a separate note how the revisions address the comments of the reviewers. The revised paper will then be re-evaluated, and either accepted or rejected.
• Reject: Papers in this category are declined for inclusion in the conference. Papers rejected from the first review cycle may not be submitted again (even in revised form) to the second review cycle.

Authors of each accepted paper must ensure that at least one author registers for the conference, and that their paper is presented in-person at the conference.

Executive Summary

All papers must adhere to the following rules (outlined more verbosely below). Papers found in violation of any of these requirements will be desk-rejected without review.

By registration deadline

• All papers MUST be registered in the respective HotCRP instance one week before the submission deadline, including the definitive title, the definitive abstract, the definitive track, and the definitive track justification.
• Abstracts and titles MUST NOT be changed after the abstract registration deadline, on the HotCRP metadata.
• Because abstracts and titles are used to match papers with reviewers, abstracts and titles MUST NOT be changed in the final submitted PDF. They MAY be adjusted in the camera-ready version upon acceptance.
• A track MUST be selected and MUST NOT be changed after the registration deadline.
• All papers MUST provide a track justification (non-empty, not dubious) by the registration deadline. The track justification MUST NOT be changed after the registration deadline.

By submission deadline

• The list of authors MAY be changed after registration but CANNOT be changed after the submission deadline. In particular, NO author can be added once papers are accepted. The order of authors MAY be changed for the camera-ready version upon acceptance.
• All papers MUST discuss Open Science. This MUST be in a separate appendix called “Open Science” (placed after the 12-page main content and the bibliography) that clearly lists where the artifacts necessary for evaluating the contributions of their submission are located. These artifacts MUST be made available at most 3 days after the time of submission, or their lack of availability should be explained by the submission deadline. In case there is no artifact, this should be stated in this section.
• All papers with online artifacts MUST provide the URL of the anonymous artifact website by submission deadline in both the paper and HotCRP.
• All papers with potential ethical concerns MUST have a discussion of research ethics. This MUST be in a separate appendix called “Ethical Considerations” (placed after the 12-page main content and the bibliography). In case of doubts on whether your paper has potential ethical concerns, add an appendix “Ethical Considerations”.
• All papers MUST NOT reveal the identity of the authors (e.g., names, self-references with “we”, funding acknowledgements, deanonymizing GitHub repositories).
• All papers MUST comply with the unaltered ACM LaTeX template. Any attempts to remove whitespace (e.g., negative vspaces, savetrees, titlesec, removing author blocks, etc.) or change the formatting defaults (e.g., fonts) are strictly forbidden. The Computing Classification System (CCS) information, such as concepts, keywords, or copyrights management information, DOI, ISBN, ACM reference format, must be retained, without any alteration, except keyword update.
• All authors MUST provide their ORCIDs through the profile page on HotCRP by the submission deadline.
• All authors MUST acknowledge the submission terms on HotCRP by the submission deadline.
• Authors MUST NOT submit more than seven papers per cycle.

By online artifacts uploading deadline

• For Cycle B, CCS will pilot a 3-day grace period for artifacts provided through anonymous hosting services. After the artifact uploading deadline (May 2nd AoE), artifacts MUST be available at the provided URL and authors MUST NOT change the artifacts after the artifact uploading deadline.

Other

• At least one author of each accepted paper MUST register for and commit to attending the conference.
• The chairs retain the right to desk-reject any submissions which attempt to disrupt the reviewing process (e.g., attempting prompt injections or crashing PDF viewers with malicious PDFs).

Authors are expected to consider the ethical implications and potential societal impact of their work. Papers that raise ethical concerns, such as those involving human subjects, user data, or real-world vulnerability analysis, must include a dedicated “Ethical Considerations” section. This section should discuss the balance of risks vs. benefits and the steps taken to minimize potential harm (e.g., responsible disclosure, data anonymization). Note that institutional (IRB/ERB) approval is neither strictly necessary nor always sufficient to demonstrate ethical conduct; we expect authors to reason about the ethics of their work beyond ensuring institutional compliance. For detailed guidance on community standards, we follow the USENIX Security ’26 Ethics Policy. This section does not count toward the page limit and must be placed after the 12-page main content and bibliography.

Artifacts are required for submissions whose contributions fundamentally rely on an implementation, experimental evaluation, system, tool, or dataset. This includes, but is not limited to, papers that:

1. Introduce a new system, library, or tool.
2. Present experimental results derived from an implementation.
3. Propose a new benchmark, dataset, or data collection methodology.

If reviewers determine that a central contribution cannot be properly evaluated without accessing artifacts that are neither provided nor convincingly justified in the Open Science appendix, the paper may be rejected.

All artifacts will be treated with the same strict confidentiality as the manuscript. Access is restricted to the assigned PC members, who may use artifacts only for the purpose of evaluating the paper. Any unauthorized use, sharing, or downloading for personal or professional purposes constitutes a serious ethical violation and may result in removal from the PC and additional sanctions.

To preserve anonymity in the double-blind review process:

• Authors should host artifacts on anonymous hosting services (e.g., anonymous.4open.science) that do not expose identifying access logs and do not allow authors to track or fingerprint individual visitors. Make sure the files remain available for the whole duration of the evaluation process and are not updated after upload.
• Authors must not use self-managed or easily modifiable hosting solutions (such as personal websites, Google Sites, Google Drive, wikis, cloud buckets, or similar services) that allow them to dynamically update content or embed tracking mechanisms.
• Authors are discouraged from using general-purpose platforms like Zenodo, Figshare, or non-anonymized GitHub repositories as their default choice, since their typical use does not provide sufficient anonymization for double-blind review.
• Anonymous URLs should be included directly in the submitted paper, for example in the Open Science appendix, not entered separately into the submission system.

For large artifacts that cannot feasibly be hosted anonymously (e.g., datasets larger than 1 GB), authors may provide a representative subset sufficient to verify the methodology and core claims. In these cases, the Open Science appendix must explain why the full artifact cannot be shared anonymously and describe how the subset preserves the integrity and representativeness of the evaluation.

New for Cycle B: As CCS values artifacts, a 3-day grace period will be granted for artifacts provided through an anonymous website (e.g., anonymous.4open.science).

• After May 2nd AoE, papers with empty or dubious artifacts at the provided URL will be desk-rejected. Similarly, any update after the artifact deadline will lead to desk rejection.
• The grace period applies to material submitted through the URL provided in the HotCRP form. Supplementary material provided through HotCRP cannot be updated within the grace period.
• The artifacts MUST correspond to figures, experiments, and results provided in the submitted paper. The paper cannot be updated after the submission deadline even if a discrepancy between the paper and the artifacts is discovered.

After acceptance, authors are encouraged to de-anonymize or replace the anonymous links with stable, citable repositories, consistent with the Open Science policy above, and to register their artifacts for optional Artifact Evaluation.

ACM CCS follows the ACM Policy on Authorship regarding the use of generative AI tools. Authors and reviewers must adhere to the following guidelines when using Large Language Models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools.

1. Guidelines for Authors

The use of generative AI tools to assist in preparing submissions is permitted, provided that human authors retain full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the work. Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors.

Hallucinations, Fabrication, and Falsification

Authors must carefully verify that all AI-generated content is accurate and supported by evidence. Submissions that contain hallucinated citations, falsified or fabricated data, experiments, or results, or other invented claims presented as fact may be desk rejected.

Mandatory Disclosure of Generative AI Usage

In accordance with ACM’s authorship policy, all uses of generative AI tools must be disclosed.

If AI tools were used only for minor editorial improvements, a brief statement in the Acknowledgements Section is sufficient.

If AI tools were used to generate or substantially rewrite substantive content, authors must include a dedicated “Generative AI Usage” section placed after the 12-page main content and the bibliography.

2. Guidelines for Reviewers

To protect the integrity and confidentiality of the peer-review process, reviewers must not upload any part of a submitted manuscript to public generative AI tools or LLM services.

Reviewers who choose to use AI tools to assist in drafting their reviews may do so only if they refrain from including any content from the submission itself.

Violations of this policy are treated as serious breaches of confidentiality and may result in removal from the Program Committee and additional ACM sanctions.

Each submission must include a brief statement in the appropriate section of HotCRP addressing:

• Track selection justification: Why is your selected track the best match for your work?

For work spanning multiple tracks, simply choose the best fit and briefly explain your reasoning, and mention any fitting alternative tracks in your statement.

The conference requires cooperation from both authors and program committee members to ensure a fair review process. Authors must report all program-committee members who, in their opinion, have a conflict of interest and therefore may not be able to provide an unbiased review.

Mandatory declared conflicts of interest include current or former doctoral advisor/advisee, members of the same institution, close family members, and recent co-authors within the past 2 years.

Track Chairs are not allowed to submit papers to their own track, but may submit papers to other tracks, subject to the overall limit of 7 papers per cycle.

Program-committee members who have a genuine conflict of interest with a paper, including the Program Chairs and the Track Chairs, will be excluded from evaluation and discussion of that paper.

Withdrawal of a paper is prohibited at any point prior to the official notification of the final decision being sent to the authors. By submitting a full paper, authors commit to seeing the submission for that cycle through the full review process.

• First review cycle: TBD
• Second review cycle: TBD

Please Note: The official publication date is the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.