Since 1980 in Oakland, the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy has been the premier forum for computer security research, presenting the latest developments and bringing together researchers and practitioners. We solicit previously unpublished papers offering novel research contributions in any aspect of security or privacy. Papers may present advances in the theory, design, implementation, analysis, verification, or empirical evaluation and measurement of secure systems.

Topics of interest include:

Access control and authorization
Accountability
Anonymity
Application security
Attacks and defenses
Authentication
Censorship resistance
Cloud security
Distributed systems security
Economics of security and privacy
Embedded systems security
Forensics
Hardware security
Intrusion detection and prevention
Malware and unwanted software
Mobile and Web security and privacy
Language-based security
Network and systems security
Privacy technologies and mechanisms
Protocol security
Secure information flow
Security and privacy for the Internet of Things
Security and privacy metrics
Security and privacy policies
Security architectures
Usable security and privacy
This topic list is not meant to be exhaustive; S&P is interested in all aspects of computer security and privacy. Papers without a clear application to security or privacy, however, will be considered out of scope and may be rejected without full review.

Systematization of Knowledge Papers
As in past years, we solicit systematization of knowledge (SoK) papers that evaluate, systematize, and contextualize existing knowledge, as such papers can provide a high value to our community. Suitable papers are those that provide an important new viewpoint on an established, major research area, support or challenge long-held beliefs in such an area with compelling evidence, or present a convincing, comprehensive new taxonomy of such an area. Survey papers without such insights are not appropriate. Submissions will be distinguished by the prefix “SoK:” in the title and a checkbox on the submission form. They will be reviewed by the full PC and held to the same standards as traditional research papers, but they will be accepted based on their treatment of existing work and value to the community, and not based on any new research results they may contain. Accepted papers will be presented at the symposium and included in the proceedings.

Workshops
The Symposium is also soliciting submissions for co-located workshops. Further details on submissions can be found at http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2017/workshops.html .

Important Dates
All deadlines are 23:59:59 EST (UTC-5).

Abstract submission deadline November 4, 2016 No Extensions
Paper submission deadline November 11, 2016 No Extensions
Early-reject notification and author appeal period January 13, 2017
Acceptance notification February 9, 2017
Camera-ready deadline TBD
Student Program Committee
Following a successful model used at last year’s conference, as well as other premier technical conferences, some paper submissions will be reviewed by a “shadow PC” of students and junior researchers, this year chaired by William Enck of North Carolina State University. For more information see http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2017/studentpc.html.

Instructions for Paper Submission
These instructions apply to both the research papers and systematization of knowledge papers.

All submissions must be original work; the submitter must clearly document any overlap with previously published or simultaneously submitted papers from any of the authors. Failure to point out and explain overlap will be grounds for rejection. Simultaneous submission of the same paper to another venue with proceedings or a journal is not allowed and will be grounds for automatic rejection. Contact the program committee chairs if there are questions about this policy.

New this year: Submitted papers must submit an abstract by the Abstract Deadline. This new process is designed to facilitate a faster and more efficient bidding process. Only papers that have had abstracts submitted by the deadline will be eligible for review.

Reviews from Prior Submissions (New this Year)
Based on USENIX Security 2015 CFP

The rapidly increasing number of papers being submitted to security conferences has put a strain on both authors’ and reviewers’ time, with both sides concerned about the implications on the fairness of the process. Concerned reviewers worry that authors will give in to the temptation to resubmit rejected papers without addressing prior reviewers’ concerns, hoping that different reviewers will lead to a different outcome. Authors are concerned that reviewers who helped to reject an earlier draft of a paper will not read an improved draft as diligently as they would read an unfamiliar submission and may miss or disregard improvements.

In the long-term, we aim to address these concerns by changing the submission process. (See the draft plan and discussion at https://ieee-security.github.io/ongoing-submission-plan/). In the short-term, for SP2017, authors may optionally submit a document (PDF or text) containing:

the complete reviews they received from prior submission(s) and
a page of up to 500 words documenting the improvements made since the prior submission(s)
Also starting this year, if a submission is derived in any way from a submission submitted to another venue (conference, journal, etc.) in the past twelve months, we require that the authors provide the name of the most recent venue to which it was submitted. This information will not be shared with reviewers. It will only be used (1) for aggregate statistics to understand the percent of resubmissions among the set of submitted (and accepted) papers; (2) at the Chairs’ discretion, to identify dual submissions and verify the accuracy of prior reviews provided by authors regarding previously rejected papers.

Early Rejection and Appeals
There will be no conventional rebuttal process. Papers that receive substantially negative initial reviews will be rejected early. The authors of early-rejected papers, and only such papers, will receive a copy of their initial reviews. Authors who substantively disagree with the reviews can appeal to the PC chairs. Authors’ appeals must clearly and explicitly identify concrete disagreements with factual statements in the initial reviews that should be adjudicated by a special arbitration reviewer who may be recruited by the PC chairs. Appealing a submission that was rejected early will keep it under consideration, and it cannot be withdrawn or resubmitted elsewhere until the final notification of acceptance or rejection.

Anonymous Submission
Papers must be submitted in a form suitable for anonymous review: no author names or affiliations may appear on the title page, and papers should avoid revealing their identity in the text. When referring to your previous work, do so in the third person, as though it were written by someone else. Only blind the reference itself in the (unusual) case that a third-person reference is infeasible. Publication as a technical report or in an online repository does not constitute a violation of this policy. Contact the program chairs if you have any questions. Papers that are not properly anonymized may be rejected without review.

Conflicts of Interest
Drawn from the ACM SIGMOD 2015 CFP

During submission of a research paper, the submission site will request information about conflicts of interest of the paper's authors with program committee (PC) members. It is the full responsibility of all authors of a paper to identify all and only their potential conflict-of-interest PC members, according to the following definition. A paper author has a conflict of interest with a PC member when and only when one or more of the following conditions holds:

The PC member is a co-author of the paper.
The PC member has been a co-worker in the same company or university within the past two years.
The PC member has been a collaborator within the past two years.
The PC member is or was the author's primary thesis advisor, no matter how long ago.
The author is or was the PC member's primary thesis advisor, no matter how long ago.
The PC member is a relative or close personal friend of the author.
Papers with incorrect or incomplete conflict of interest information as of the submission closing time are subject to immediate rejection.

Human Subjects and Ethical Considerations
Drawn from the USENIX Security 2016 CFP

Submissions that describe experiments on human subjects, that analyze data derived from human subjects (even anonymized data), or that otherwise may put humans at risk should:

Disclose whether the research received an approval or waiver from each of the authors' institutional ethics review boards (IRB) if applicable.
Discuss steps taken to ensure that participants and others who might have been affected by an experiment were treated ethically and with respect.
If the submission deals with vulnerabilities (e.g., software vulnerabilities in a given program or design weaknesses in a hardware system), the authors need to discuss in detail the steps they have taken or plan to take to address these vulnerabilities (e.g., by disclosing vulnerabilities to the vendors). The same applies if the submission deals with personal identifiable information (PII) or other kinds of sensitive data. If a paper raises significant ethical and legal concerns, it might be rejected based on these concerns.

Authors seeking ways to reduce the ethical risks of their experiments may optionally consider reaching out to the Ethics Feedback Panel for Networking and Security. The panel's mission is to help researchers identify ethics-related risks, find prior research that provides precedent or data to inform ethical decision making, to suggest ways to improve experimental designs to reduce ethical risks, and provide any other information that may assist the researchers in meeting their ethical obligations. The best time to reach out to this panel is before conducting your experiments, but they may be able to assist if concerns arise during an experiment. Contact the program co-chairs if you have any questions.

Page Limit and Formatting
Submitted papers may include up to 15 pages of text and up to 5 pages for references and appendices, totaling no more than 20 pages. The same applies to camera-ready papers, although, at the PC chairs’ discretion, additional pages may be allowed for references and appendices. Reviewers are not required to read appendices.

Papers must be formatted for US letter (not A4) size paper. The text must be formatted in a two-column layout, with columns no more than 9.5 in. tall and 3.5 in. wide. The text must be in Times font, 10-point or larger, with 11-point or larger line spacing. Authors are encouraged to use the IEEE conference proceedings templates. LaTeX submissions should use IEEEtran.cls version 1.8. All submissions will be automatically checked for conformance to these requirements. Failure to adhere to the page limit and formatting requirements are grounds for rejection without review.

Submission
Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf). Authors should pay special attention to unusual fonts, images, and figures that might create problems for reviewers. Your document should render correctly in Adobe Reader 9 and when printed in black and white.

Bulk Submissions
Special rules apply to all submissions by authors who submit more than 3 non-SoK papers. The title of every submission from such an author must start with "BULK SUBMISSION:". If the paper has been previously considered at other conferences, journals, or workshops, the submitted version must include an appendix that lists:

the year and full name of those venues,
the complete set of reviews, and
detailed description of the changes made since.
This appendix does not count towards the page limit. By their submission, the authors of these papers acknowledge and accept that the PC chairs may solicit further information about them (e.g., to verify the contents of the appendix) and pass such information on to the PC. Failure to comply with these rules will result in automatic rejection of the bulk submissions without consideration.

Publication and Presentation
Authors are responsible for obtaining appropriate publication clearances. One of the authors of the accepted paper is expected to present the paper at the conference.

For more information, contact the program co-chairs at: oakland17-pcchairs@ieee-security.org if you have any questions.

Program Committee
Chairs
Úlfar Erlingsson Google
Bryan Parno Microsoft Research
Members
Coming soon