HoTSoS 2026 Program Agenda
| Times are listed in U.S. Eastern Time | |
| TUESDAY, APRIL 14 | |
| SESSION 1 | |
| Networking, log into the platform and chat with other attendees | |
| 10:00 - 10:15 |
Welcome and Opening Remarks Benjamin Erichson (ICSI) and Jonathan Aldrich (CMU) |
| 10:15 - 11:15 |
Keynote Presentation: TBD Taesoo Kim (Georgia Institute of Technology) |
| 11:15 - 11:30 | BREAK |
| SESSION 2 | |
| 11:30 - 12:15 |
Panel: Startups Born from University Research Perry Alexander (KU), Ariana Mirian (BeeSafe AI), Norman Sadeh (CMU), Bradley Potteiger (Arms Cyber) Moderator: Natalie Scala (Towson University) |
| 12:15 - 13:00 |
WIP: Trouble at the top: can Python extend the chains of trust in infrastructure firmware? Larry Hernandez (Dartmouth), Sergey Bratus (Dartmouth) Discussant: TBD |
| 13:00 - 14:00 | LUNCH |
| SESSION 3 | |
| 14:00 - 14:45 |
Panel: Future of Foundational Research Neal Ziring (NSA), Jeff Dickerson (NSA) |
| 14:45 - 15:30 |
WIP: Establishing Systems-Level Competitive Leaderboards for Autonomous Network Security Operations Brian Singer, Lakshmi Adiga, Marko Morrison, Lujo Bauer, Vyas Sekar (CMU) Discussant: TBD |
| 15:30 - 15:45 | BREAK |
| SESSION 4 | |
| 15:45 - 16:10 |
Out-of-Distribution Detection for Neurosymbolic Autonomous Cyber Agents Ankita Samaddar, Nicholas Potteiger, Xenofon D. Koutsoukos (VU) |
| 16:10 - 16:35 |
Target-Centric Firmware Rehosting with Penguin Zachary J Estrada, Andrew Fasano, Luke Craig, Ben Levy, Jordan McLeod, Jacques Becker, Caden Kline, Elysia Witham, Cole DiLorenzo, Ali Bobi, Tim Leek (MIT) |
| 16:35 - 17:00 |
Decompiling the Synergy: An Empirical Study of Human–LLM Teaming in Software Reverse Engineering Zion Leonahenahe Basque, Ananta Soneji, Wil Gibbs, Adam Doupe, Yan Shoshitaishvili, Ruoyu Wang (ASU) |
| WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15 | |
| SESSION 5 | |
| 10:00 - 11:00 |
Keynote Presentation: TBD Bo Li (UIUC) |
| 11:00 - 11:15 | BREAK |
| SESSION 6 | |
| 11:15 - 12:00 |
Panel: AI Safety Nathan Hodges (PNNL), Yue Dong (UC Riverside), Nada Madkour (CLTC - UCB), Eddie French (DSU) |
| 12:00 - 13:45 | POSTER SESSION / LUNCH |
| SESSION 7 | |
| 13:45 - 14:30 |
WIP: Towards Adaptive Contextual Safety in Multi-Modal LLMs Ce Zhang, Jinxi He, Junyi He, Katia P. Sycara, Yaqi Xie (CMU) Discussant: Yue Dong (UC Riverside) |
| 14:30 - 15:15 |
WIP: Identifying Weight Surgery Attacks in Siamese Networks Harun Ali Khan, Prasad Kulkarni, Michael Reed Smith (KU) Discussant: Benjamin Erichson (ICSI) |
| 15:15 - 15:30 | BREAK |
| SESSION 8 | |
| 15:30 - 15:55 |
LLM Honeypot: Leveraging large language models as advanced interactive honeypot systems Hakan T. Otal, M Abdullah Canbaz (University of Albany) |
| 15:55 - 16:20 |
What do Geometric Hallucination Detection Metrics Actually Measure? Eric Yeats, John Buckheit, Sarah McGuire Scullen, Brendan Kennedy, Loc Truong, Davis Brown, Bill Kay, Cliff Joslyn, Tegan Emerson, Michael J. Henry, John Anthony Emanuello, Henry Kvinge (PNNL) |
| 16:20 - 16:45 |
Structured Command Hijacking against Embodied Artificial Intelligence with Text-based Controls Luis Burbano (UC Santa Cruz) |
| THURSDAY, APRIL 16 | |
| SESSION 9 | |
| 10:00 - 11:00 |
Keynote Presentation: TBD Deian Stefan (UC San Diego) |
| 11:00 - 11:15 | BREAK |
| SESSION 10 | |
| 11:15 - 11:40 |
Security Reasoning via Substructural Dependency Tracking Hemant Gouni, Jonathan Aldrich, Frank Pfenning (CMU) |
| 11:40 - 12:05 |
TickTock: Verified Isolation in a Production Embedded OS Vivien Rindisbacher, Evan Johnson, Nico Lehmann, Tyler Potyondy, Pat Pannuto, Stefan Savage, Deian Stefan, Ranjit Jhala (UC San Diego) |
| 12:05 - 12:30 |
Identity Crisis in Confidential Computing: Formal Analysis of Attested TLS Muhammad Usama Sardar (TU Dresden) |
| 12:30 - 13:30 | LUNCH |
| SESSION 11 | |
| 13:30 - 14:15 |
WIP: The hidden life of signals: Time-domain inferences and other privacy attacks on everyday devices Larry Hernandez (Dartmouth) Discussant: Jeff Kuhn |
| 14:15 - 15:00 |
WIP: Formal Verification of Resource-Constrained Cyber Strategies across Macro, Meso, and Micro Scales Jonathan Goohs Jr., Adam Pease (Naval Postgraduate School) Discussant: TBD |
| 15:00 - 15:15 | BREAK |
| SESSION 12 | |
| 15:15 - 15:45 |
2026 Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition Welcome by Shavon Donnell (NSA) |
| 15:45 - 17:00 |
2025 Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition Winner Dan Boneh, Alex Ozdemir, Evan Monroe Laufer (Stanford) Moderator: Adam Tagert |
| 17:00 - 17:10 |
Announcement of Winning Poster / Closing remarks Adam Tagert (NSA) |
| SYMPOSIUM ADJOURNED | |
HoTSoS features a unique session type, the Works in Progress (WIP). This session assists authors in writing high quality research papers by having a community discussion on the research early in the research process. This early feedback enables researchers to adjust on-going research to respond to concerns traditionally raised after the research and paper are completed and it is being peer-reviewed for conferences and journals. This early presentation promotes faster and easier publication.