VehicleSec'25 Call for Papers

VehicleSec ’25: 3rd USENIX Symposium on Vehicle Security and Privacy 

August 11–12, 2025, Seattle, WA, USA 

Sponsored by USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association

https://www.usenix.org/conference/vehiclesec25/call-for-papers

 

The 3rd USENIX Symposium on Vehicle Security and Privacy (VehicleSec ’25) will be co-located with the 34th USENIX Security Symposium and will take place August 11–12, 2025 at the Seattle Convention Center in Seattle, WA, USA.

Important Dates 

  • Paper submissions due: Thursday, February 27, 2025, 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time
  • Notification of paper acceptance: Thursday, April 10, 2025
  • Final papers due: Thursday, May 15, 2025
  • Demo/Poster/Tutorial/Lightning Talk submissions due: Thursday, May 1, 2025
  • Notification of Demo/Poster/Tutorial/Lightning Talk acceptance: Thursday, May 15, 2025
  • Demo/Poster/Tutorial final abstracts due: Thursday, May 22, 2025

Overview

A vehicle is a machine that transports people and/or goods in one or more physical domains, such as on the ground (e.g., cars, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, buses, scooters, trains), in the air (e.g., drones, airplanes, helicopters), in the water (e.g., ships, boats, watercraft), and in space (e.g., spacecraft). Due to their safety and mission-critical nature, the security and privacy of vehicles can pose direct threats to passengers, owners, operators, and the infrastructure. Recent improvements in vehicle autonomy and connectivity (e.g., autonomous driving, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, intelligent transportation systems, and swarm robotics) have also served to exacerbate security and privacy challenges and thus require urgent attention from academia, industry, and policy-makers. To meet this critical need, VehicleSec aims to bring together an audience of university researchers, scientists, industry professionals, and government representatives to contribute new theories, technologies, and systems on any security/privacy issues related to vehicles (e.g., ground, aerial, in/on water, space), their sub-systems (e.g., in-vehicle networks, autonomy, connectivity, human-machine interfaces), supporting infrastructures (e.g., transportation infrastructure, charging station, ground control station), and related fundamental technologies (e.g., sensing, control, AI/ML/DNN/LLM, wireless communication, real-time computing, edge computing, location service, simulation, digital twin, multi-agent protocol/system design, and human-machine interaction).

Demo/Poster Session

VehicleSec will feature a demo/poster session to allow academic, governmental, and industry participants to share demonstrations and/or present posters of their latest practical attacks, defenses, and security/privacy tools or systems related to vehicles.

Tutorial Session

The symposium will also feature a tutorial session with an in-depth learning experience on one or more state-of-the-art topics in vehicle privacy and security presented by researchers or practitioners within the field. A tutorial should focus on its topic in detail and include references to the "must-read" papers or materials within its domain. Tutorials in which participants actively engage in exercises or hands-on work are particularly welcome. We encourage tutorials to include hands-on elements, live demonstrations, or interactive discussions. Each tutorial will be allocated either a one-hour or a two-hour slot, depending on the scope and depth of the content. Proposals should clearly indicate the preferred duration and format of the tutorial.

Lightning Talk Session

The symposium will feature a Lightning Talks session with short and engaging 5-minute in-person presentations on any topics that can be worth a timely shout-out to the VehicleSec community, which include but are not limited to emerging hot topics, preliminary research results, practical problems encountered, lessons learned, the introduction of tutorials and education materials, tips and tricks, simulators/simulations, data and visualizations (e.g., autonomous driving datasets), or other (interdisciplinary) topics related to vehicles.

Awards

Accepted papers and demos/posters will be considered for a Best Paper Award and Best Demo Award. In addition, a special AutoDriving Security Award will be given to one of the accepted papers to recognize and reward research that makes substantial contributions to secure today's autonomous driving technology.

Areas of Interest

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  • Embedded/sensor/analog/actuator security, privacy, and forensics in vehicle settings
  • Vehicle-related malware/firmware analysis
  • Secure/resilient/trustworthy/privacy-preserving perception, localization, planning, and control in autonomous/automated vehicles
  • Security/safety/robustness verification related to vehicles
  • Intra- and inter-vehicle network (e.g., CAN bus, V2X, remote operator channel) security
  • Multi-vehicle coordination/cooperation (e.g., V2X, drone swarm) security
  • Compliance with policies (e.g., legal, security, privacy, safety, and environmental policies)
  • Secure integration of hardware and software systems for vehicles (e.g., ground, aerial)
  • Secure software/hardware updates in vehicle settings (e.g., cars, drones, airplanes)
  • Privacy challenges in vehicle settings, e.g., driver/passenger privacy, drone/car/robot spying, intellectual property stealing, etc.
  • Privacy-preserving data sharing and analysis in vehicle settings
  • Security/privacy in electric, medium- and heavy-duty vehicle systems
  • Security/privacy in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), e.g., intelligent traffic signals
  • Security/privacy for vehicle-related supporting infrastructure (e.g., charging)
  • Secure vehicle-related software/hardware development process (e.g., debugging tools, simulators, testbed) and their own security/privacy
  • Security/privacy of any vehicle-related fundamental technologies (e.g., sensing, control, AI, location service, IoT, etc.)
  • Human factors, trust, humans in the loop, and usable security related to vehicles
  • Security/privacy/resilience-related metrics and risk assessment for vehicles
  • GenAI-enabled attacks on vehicles and corresponding defensive approaches
  • GenAI tools and frameworks for the security of vehicles

Ethical Considerations

We expect authors to carefully consider and address the potential harms associated with carrying out their research, as well as the potential negative consequences that could stem from publishing their work. Failure to do so may result in the rejection of a submission regardless of its quality and scientific value. Where relevant, papers should include a clear statement about why the benefit of the research outweighs the harms and how the authors have taken measures and followed best practices to ensure safety and minimize the potential harms caused by their research. This includes but is not limited to, considering the impact of your research on deployed systems, understanding the costs your research imposes on others, safely and appropriately collecting data, and following responsible disclosure.

Human Subjects Research

If your submitted document relates to human subjects, analyzes data derived from human subjects, may put humans at risk, or might have other ethical implications or introduce legal issues of potential concern to the VehicleSec community, authors should disclose if an ethics review (e.g., IRB approval) was conducted, and discuss in the paper how ethical and legal concerns were addressed.

Vulnerability Disclosure

If your submitted document reports a potentially high-impact vulnerability, the authors should discuss in detail the steps they have already taken or plan to take to address these vulnerabilities (e.g., by disclosing vulnerabilities to the vendors). The chairs will contact the authors in case of concerns. The Program Committee reserves the right to reject a submission if insufficient evidence was presented that ethical or relevant legal concerns were appropriately addressed.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors and Program Committee members are required to indicate any conflict of interest and its nature. Advisors and those that they are advising, as well as authors and PC members with an institutional relationship, are considered to share a conflict of interest. Professional collaborations (irrespective of whether they resulted in publication or funding) that occurred in the past 2 years and close personal relationships equally constitute a conflict of interest. PC members, including chairs, who have a conflict of interest with a paper will be entirely excluded from the evaluation of that paper.

A Special Note on “Fake Conflicts”: Declaring conflicts of interest to avoid certain (otherwise non-conflicting) PC members is not allowed and can constitute grounds for rejection. The PC Chairs reserve the right to request additional explanation for any declared conflict. If authors have concerns about the fair treatment of their submissions, they should instead contact the chairs and provide convincing arguments for any special consideration that they are requesting.

Acknowledgment

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 2025 IEEE S&P Financial Conflicts Policy for examples.

 

Submitted by Regan Williams on