USENIX Security '25 submissions deadlines are as follows:
- Cycle 1 Deadline: Wednesday, September 4, 2024, 11:59 pm AoE
- Cycle 2 Deadline: Wednesday, January 22, 2025, 11:59 pm AoE
All papers that are accepted by the end of the second submission cycle (January–June 2025) will appear in the proceedings for USENIX Security '25. All submissions should be made online via their respective submission systems: Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 (available soon) . We do not accept email submissions.
Submitted papers should describe original, scientifically sound work produced by the co-authors. All submissions will be judged on originality, relevance, correctness, and clarity. Submissions should be finished, complete papers. We may desk-reject papers that have severe editorial problems (broken references, egregious spelling or grammar errors, missing figures, etc.), are submitted in violation of the Submission Instructions outlined below, are outside of the scope of the symposium, or are deemed clearly of insufficient quality to appear in the program.
Summary of main changes from previous editions
- Ethics considerations and compliance with the open science policy must be discussed in the paper. An extra page is provided just for these topics. Artifacts are expected to be available by the camera-ready deadline.
Paper Format
Submissions must be in PDF format. Please make sure your submission can be opened using Adobe Reader. Please make sure your submission, and all embedded figures, are intelligible when printed in grayscale.
Submissions should be typeset on U.S. letter-sized pages in two-column format in 10-point Times Roman type on 12-point leading (single-spaced), in a text block 7" x 9" deep. Authors must use USENIX's templates and style files when preparing the paper for submission. Failure to adhere to the page limit and formatting requirements can be grounds for rejection.
Initial paper submissions (i.e., all papers except those that have been revised after receiving an "Invited for Major Revision" decision at USENIX Security '25 or "Accept Conditional on Major Revision" at USENIX Security '24) should consist of at most 13 typeset pages for the main body of the paper, one additional page for discussing ethics considerations and compliance with the open science policy, and a bibliography and well-marked appendices. At submission time, there is no limit on the length of the bibliography and appendices but reviewers are not required to read any appendices. These appendices may be included to assist reviewers who may have questions that fall outside the stated contribution of the paper on which your work is to be evaluated, or to provide details that would only be of interest to a small minority of readers. The paper should be self-contained without appendices.
To accommodate additional material requested by reviewers, the revisions for papers that previously received an "Accept Conditional on Major Revision" decision can use up to 14 typeset pages for the main body of the paper, excluding the one page for discussing ethics considerations and compliance with the open science policy, the bibliography, and well-marked appendices.
Once accepted, the final version should be no longer than 20 pages, including the bibliography and any appendices.
Anonymous Submission
The review process will be anonymous. Papers must be submitted in a form suitable for anonymous review:
- The title page should not contain any author names or affiliations.
- Authors should carefully review figures and appendices (especially survey instruments) to ensure affiliations are not accidentally included.
- When referring to your previous work, do so in the third person, as though it were written by someone else. Anonymous references are only allowed in the (unusual) case that a third-person reference is infeasible, and after approval of the chairs.
- Authors may include links to websites that contain source code, tools, or other supplemental material. Neither the link in the paper nor the website itself should suggest the authors' identities (e.g., the website should not contain the authors' names or affiliations).
- Authors should carefully check any submitted prior reviews for identifying details.
Papers that are not properly anonymized may be rejected without review.
While submitted papers must be anonymous, authors may choose to give talks about their work, post a preprint of the paper online, disclose security vulnerabilities to vendors or the public, etc., during the review process.
Simultaneous Submission and Plagiarism
Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, and plagiarism constitute dishonesty or fraud. Authors should relate their submission to any other relevant submissions of theirs in other venues that are under review at the same time as their submission to the Symposium. These citations to simultaneously submitted papers should be anonymized; non-anonymous versions of these citations must, however, be emailed to the program co-chairs at sec25chairs@usenix.org. Failure to point out and explain overlap with published or simultaneously submitted papers will be grounds for rejection. USENIX, like other scientific and technical conferences and journals, prohibits these practices and may take action against authors who have committed them. See the USENIX Conference Submissions Policy for details.
Papers that have received a decision of "Invited for Major Revision" from USENIX Security are still considered to be under review until accepted or rejected by the reviewers; authors must formally withdraw their paper if they wish to submit to another venue. See USENIX Security '25 Reviewing Model for details. Submissions that were rejected from the last cycle of USENIX Security '24 may not be resubmitted until the second cycle of USENIX Security '25.
All submitted papers are considered to be under review for USENIX Security '25 until authors are notified of a decision by the program committee or the program co-chairs approve a request for withdrawal.
Ethics
Reviewers will be asked to evaluate the ethics of all submissions. All submissions are hence required to have an ethics considerations section in the main body of the paper, or in the extra page offered for "ethics considerations and compliance with the open science policy" (see the Paper Format section above), or both. In some cases, the ethics discussion may be short; in other cases, the ethics consideration may be long. Regardless of length, from reading the main body of the paper and the extra "ethics considerations and compliance with the open science policy" page, it should be clear to reviewers that the authors made sound and responsible ethical decisions.
Authors should be prepared to answer these questions in the conference submission portal:
- "I attest that I read the ethics considerations discussions in the conference call for papers, the detailed submissions instructions, and the guidelines for ethics document."
- "I attest that the research team considered the ethics of this research, that the authors believe the research was done ethically, and that the team's next-step plans (e.g., after publication) are ethical."
- "I attest that the submission has a clearly-marked section on ethical considerations in the body of the paper and/or in the extra 'ethics considerations and compliance with the open science policy' page."
In addition to reading this page, authors are expected to read the Call for Papers and the Ethics Guidelines.
Open Science Policy
Non-compliance with the new open science policy can lead to severe repercussions, including the rejection of the non-compliant paper or, in the case of egregious violations such as not following through with promised artifact sharing, barring the authors from submitting to future conference cycles.
Reviews from Prior Submissions
For papers that were previously submitted to and rejected from a conference (including USENIX Security), authors may, but are not required to, submit a separate PDF document containing the prior reviews along with a description of how those reviews were addressed in the current version of the paper.
Reviewers will submit their initial reviews prior to becoming aware of previous reviews and summaries of changes to avoid being biased in formulating their own opinions; once their initial reviews are submitted, however, reviewers will be given the opportunity to update their thoughts based on the submission history of the paper.
Rules for Revisions
For submissions that received "Invited for Major Revision" decisions during one of the USENIX Security '25 submission periods, authors who revise their papers must submit a separate PDF document that includes the verbatim revision criteria, a list of changes made to the paper, an explanation of how the changes address the criteria, and a copy of the revised paper in which the changes from the original version are highlighted. Ideally, the highlighted version of the paper would be produced by latexdiff or a similar tool. However, if papers have gone through major changes that would make such a document unreadable, authors are free to provide another format that helps the shepherd to identify changes efficiently.
Papers that have received a decision of "Invited for Major Revision" from USENIX Security are still considered to be under review until accepted or rejected by the reviewers; authors must formally withdraw their paper if they wish to submit to another venue.
For resubmissions of "Major Revisions" from USENIX Security '24, please look at USENIX Security '24 Submission Policies and Instructions for requirements. Authors are encouraged but not required to adhere to the USENIX Security '25 guidelines for discussing ethics considerations and compliance with open science guidelines.
Embargo Requests
Authors may request an embargo for their papers by the deadline dates listed below. All embargoed papers will be released on the first day of the conference, Wednesday, August 13, 2025.
- Cycle 1 deadline for embargo requests: Thursday, February 27, 2025
- Cycle 2 deadline for embargo requests: Thursday, July 10, 2025
If your accepted paper should not be published prior to the event, please notify production@usenix.org after you submit your final paper.
Conflicts of Interest
The program co-chairs require cooperation from both authors and program committee members to prevent submissions from being evaluated by reviewers who have a conflict of interest. During the submission process, we will ask authors to identify members of the program committee with whom they share a conflict of interest. This includes: (1) anyone who shares an institutional affiliation with an author at the time of submission (including secondary affiliations and consulting work), (2) anyone who was the advisor or advisee of an author at any time in the past, (3) anyone the author has collaborated or published with in the prior two years, (4) anyone who is affiliated with a party that funds your research, or (5) close personal relationships. For other forms of conflict, authors must contact the chairs and explain the perceived conflict. In addition to selecting program committee conflicts when submitting, we recommend that all authors ensure they have up-to-date HotCRP profiles listing all known conflicts.
Program committee members who have conflicts of interest with a paper, including program co-chairs, will be excluded from the evaluation and discussion of the paper.
Final versions of accepted submissions should include all sources of funding in an acknowledgments section. Authors should also disclose any affiliations, interests, or other facts that might be relevant to readers seeking to interpret the work and its implications. Authors may wish to consider the 2023 IEEE S&P Financial Conflicts Policy for example.
To prevent retroactive conflicts of interest, all authors must be declared at submission time.
Confidentiality of Submissions
The program committee and external reviewers are required to treat all submissions as confidential. However, the program co-chairs or designated committee members may share submissions outside the program committee to allow chairs of other conferences to identify dual submissions.
Papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered.
Reasons for Desk Rejection
Papers should not attempt to "squeeze space" by exploiting underspecified formatting criteria (e.g., columns) or through manipulating other document properties (e.g., page layout, spacing, fonts, figures and tables, headings). Papers that, in the chair's assessment, make use of these techniques to receive an unfair advantage, will be rejected, even if they comply with the above specifications. We offer several examples of observed techniques that have or could lead to rejection. Authors should seek to meet page limits through the modification of content alone. Any other techniques (whether appearing in these examples or not) may result in rejection.
Please make sure your paper successfully returns from the PDF checker (visible upon PDF submission) and that document properties, such as font size and margins, can be verified via PDF editing tools such as Adobe Acrobat. Papers where the chairs can not verify compliance with the CFP will be rejected.
During the paper submission, the authors need to select among the available topics the ones that are more appropriate for their work. A failure to select topics or a clear attempt at selecting inappropriate or misleading entries may be grounds for administrative rejection.
Internet Defense Prize
The Internet Defense Prize recognizes and rewards research that meaningfully makes the internet more secure. Created in 2014, the award is funded by Meta and offered in partnership with USENIX to celebrate contributions to the protection and defense of the internet. Successful recipients of the Internet Defense Prize will provide a working prototype that demonstrates significant contributions to the security of the internet, particularly in the areas of prevention and defense. This award is meant to recognize the direction of the research and not necessarily its progress to date. The intent of the award is to inspire researchers to focus on high-impact areas of research. The USENIX Security Awards Committee—selected by the Program Chairs among the symposium Program Committee members—independently determines the prize, to be distributed by USENIX.
You may submit your USENIX Security '25 paper submission for consideration for the Prize as part of the regular submission process.
Contact Information
Specific questions about submissions may be sent to the program co-chairs at sec25chairs@usenix.org. The chairs will respond to individual questions about the submission process if contacted at least a week before the submission deadline.
Further questions? Contact your program co-chairs, sec25chairs@usenix.org, or the USENIX office, submissionspolicy@usenix.org.
Go to Call for Papers | Reviewing Model