Call for Papers

The 18th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (ACM WiSec 2025) will be held in person from June 30 to July 3, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia, USA.

ACM WiSec is the leading ACM and SIGSAC conference dedicated to all aspects of security and privacy in wireless and mobile networks and their applications. In addition to the traditional ACM WiSec topics of physical, link, and network layer security, we welcome papers focusing on the increasingly diverse range of mobile or wireless applications such as the Internet of Things, Cyber-Physical Systems, as well as the security and privacy of mobile software platforms, usable security and privacy, biometrics, and cryptography.

Topics of interest for WiSec include the following, concerning systems in the second list below:

  • Confidentiality, integrity, availability
  • Authentication, identity, authorization, access control models and policies, localization, key management (agreement or distribution),
  • Privacy of systems, devices, users, their locations and other attributes
  • Exploitation of systems, including through reverse engineering, fuzzing, hardware or software vulnerabilities, protocol vulnerabilities, side channels, fault injection, resource exhaustion, jamming, or other means.
  • Abuse of and through systems, including messaging abuse (spam, robocalls, etc.), theft of service, and fraud
  • Defenses for exploitation and abuse
  • Experiences developing, testing, and deploying production-ready or large-scale secure wireless systems
  • Formal analysis, formal verification, and proof-based security approaches
  • Information theoretical approaches for security
  • Usable security and privacy, human factors
  • Application of Machine Learning, e.g., for attack detection or privacy violations
  • Economic and social impacts to security and privacy

Wireless and Mobile Systems of Interest include:

  • Wireless networking protocols, for example: 802.11, Bluetooth, 802.15.4-based protocols, cellular air protocols including LTE and 5G-NR, Vehicle and industrial device protocols (e.g., LoRA), wireless for critical infrastructure (e.g., ADS-B, GPS, rail, satellites), NFC and smart payment applications Cryptographic primitives and protocols for wireless and mobile systems, including: WPA2, AKA, etc.
  • Wireless physical layer technologies: transmission, reception, modulation, localization, remote sensing (e.g., radar, mmWave sensing), jammers, dynamic spectrum reuse and cognitive radio systems
  • Wireless and mobile device hardware and software, for example: embedded devices, wearables (e.g., watches), smartphones, mobile sensors, home and industrial automation devices (e.g., IoT, Smart Home, utilities, etc.), healthcare devices, vehicles (e.g., drones, automotive, avionics, satelites), and payment systems
  • Wireless and mobile adjacent topics, including voice interfaces, visible light communications, sonic, underwater communications, legacy telecommunications, …

The proceedings of ACM WiSec, sponsored by SIGSAC, will be published by ACM.

Important dates

Please note: WiSec will have two rounds of submissions. In previous years, WiSec has had a tradition of announcing deadline extensions. Due to the change in the submission process, there will not be time for extensions this year and all deadlines are firm.

  • First Cycle deadline
    • Submission: Nov 21, 2024
    • Author Notification: Jan 15, 2025
    • Camera-ready: Feb 05, 2025
  • Second Cycle deadline
    • Submission: Mar 12, 2025
    • Author Notification: Apr 23, 2025
    • Camera-ready: May 12, 2025
  • Posters/Demo
    • Submission: Early May 2025
    • Notifications: Mid-May 2025
    • Camera-Ready: Late May 2025
  • WiSec conference: June 30 - July 3, 2025

Submission Guidelines

All papers for ACM WiSec 2025 must be submitted electronically through the HotCRP conference management system.

Only PDF files will be accepted. Submissions must be prepared using the following ACM proceedings template and must use US Letter page size (215.9 x 279.4 mm / 8.5 x 11 inches):

Full, short, and SoK papers

Full paper submissions to ACM WiSec 2025 can be up to 10 pages in the ACM conference style excluding the bibliography and well-marked appendices, and up to 12 pages in total. ACM WiSec also encourages the submission of short papers with a length of up to 6 pages (including bibliography and appendices), which describe mature work of a more succinct nature. All papers must be thoroughly anonymized for double-blind reviewing.

Detailed submission instructions will be made available as the deadline approaches.

In addition to regular papers that present novel contributions in the field, we solicit Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) papers that evaluate, systematize, and contextualize existing knowledge on any of the above topics. Suitable papers provide an important new viewpoint on an established research area, support or challenge long-held beliefs with compelling evidence, present a convincing new taxonomy of such an area, and/or identify research gaps with evidence and a structured approach. Survey papers without such contributions are not suitable. SoK submissions will be distinguished by the prefix “SoK:” in the title and a checkbox on the submission form. They can be up to 10 pages in the ACM conference style excluding the bibliography and well-marked appendices, and up to 15 pages overall. They will be reviewed by the program committee and held to the same standards as regular research papers, except instead of emphasizing novel research contributions the emphasis will be on value to the community. Accepted papers will be presented at the symposium and included in the proceedings.

Posters and demos

WiSec will solicit submission of posters and demos. The instructions to submit posters/demos will be made available on the WiSec 2025 website.

Artifact Evaluation label

In the spirit of open science, WiSec encourages authors of accepted papers to make software and data artifacts publicly available to the community.

Such artifacts will be evaluated by the artifact evaluation committee and corresponding papers will be granted an artifact evaluation label. While artifacts are optional, their availability will be positively considered during paper evaluation. Should the authors choose to submit their artifacts for evaluation, they should indicate their decision upon paper submission and follow the artifact submission guidelines in order to submit them upon paper acceptance. The detailed guidelines will be made available on the WiSec 2025 website.

Double submissions

It is a policy of the ACM to disallow double/simultaneous submissions, where the same (or substantially similar) paper is concurrently submitted to multiple conferences/journals. Any double submissions detected will be immediately rejected from all conferences/journals involved. Technical reports and pre-prints published online are allowed.

Workshops and Tutorial

ACM WiSec will host workshops/tutorials co-organized with the main conference. Details will be made available on the website.

Research Ethics

Ethical conduct of research is critical to ensuring the public trust and support of science. All submitted papers will be reviewed for ethical concerns, and if ethical practices were not followed a paper will be rejected regardless of any other merit. Ethical concerns vary from project to project, so there is no “one size fits all” approach. Rather, researchers should consider ethical analysis to be an integral part of the research, just as evaluation and method design are. Ethics should be considered early in a project, during a project, and as the project is prepared for publication.

While every situation is unique, there are principles that researchers should consider and apply during their projects. The Menlo Report provides guidance and examples for network security. Principally, all research should embody the concepts of beneficence, justice, respect for persons, and respect of law and public interest. This is just as true for technical research as human subjects research. For example, if it is possible that a research method could cause harm to systems or users (e.g., testing jamming) researchers should explicitly detail the measures taken to prevent harm.

Research ethics is also paramount in any study that could be classified as “human subjects.” For WiSec, “human subject research” is defined as “research that involves interaction with identifiable humans or analysis of datasets containing data from one or more identifiable living humans.” Researchers are expected to follow the laws and common practices regarding human subjects review of their relevant jurisdictions and institutions. For example, researchers in the United States must undergo review by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) before beginning human subjects research. Authors doing human subjects research should mention the review standards in their jurisdictions and if they were met.

Computer security and privacy research often studies and even advances tools and techniques with the capacity to harm others. In their submission, authors must convince reviewers that appropriate steps were taken to disclose newly discovered vulnerabilities to appropriate parties

Policy for Peer-Review Integrity

All SIGSAC sponsored conferences and workshops are required to follow ACM policies against harassment activities (https://www.acm.org/about-acm/policy-against-harassment) and ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics). Also all authors, PC members and non-PC reviewers are required to follow ACM Publications Policies (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/toc). Particularly, we require all reviewers to uphold the integrity of the peer review process and avoid conflict of interest of any form (e.g., reviewer collusion ring). Those who violate these policies will be penalized according to ACM policies (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/penalties-for-publication-violations). If you would like to report a violation, please contact program chairs of your conferences/workshops or SIGSAC officers. We are committed to protecting the confidentiality of your communication.