CCS Submission
Use this for a CCS paper submission audit. Reopen the current Call for Papers, the cycle's HotCRP site, the ACM sigconf template, and the ethics policy before giving deadline-ready advice, because CCS rules and dates are set per cycle.
Submission audit
- Confirm the target is the main CCS research track, not a workshop, poster, or the SIGSAC co-located events.
- Register the abstract in HotCRP before the registration deadline. CCS requires a mandatory title, author list, abstract, and topics one week before the full-paper deadline; no abstract, no paper. In 2026 registration led the paper deadline by seven days each cycle.
- Apply the unaltered ACM
sigconftwo-column template. CCS 2026 set a 12-page main-text limit excluding the bibliography, well-marked appendices, and supplementary material. Whitespace and margin tampering is forbidden and is a desk-reject trigger. - Enforce anonymization: cite your own prior work in the third person, blind references only where third-person phrasing is infeasible, and strip identity from text, PDF metadata, system names, and repository links.
- Place the ethics considerations content in a dedicated section (in 2026, an appendix after the 12-page body and bibliography) whenever the work touches human subjects, user data, or real-world vulnerabilities.
- Respect the per-cycle submission cap (2026: at most 7 papers per author per cycle) and the one-cycle rule — a first-cycle reject cannot return the same year.
- Confirm the work is not concurrently under review at another archival venue.
Blocking risks
- Missing abstract registration, or a late abstract or paper upload.
- Overlength main text or an altered
sigconftemplate. - Identity leak in the PDF, metadata, artifact link, or a non-blinded system name.
- Missing ethics considerations section for work that plainly needs one.
- Dual submission to another archival security venue.
- A threat model too vague for reviewers to score the attacker.
Desk-reject and triage table
| Trigger | Severity at CCS | Repair window |
|---|---|---|
| No registered abstract by the deadline | Cannot submit | None |
| Overlength 12-page body or template tampering | Desk reject | None after the deadline |
| Identity leak in PDF or artifact link | Desk reject | None |
| Ethics section missing for human-subjects/vuln work | Desk reject or major flag | Only before the deadline |
| Vague threat model | Review-stage damage | Fixable in the writing pass |
Final-week sequence for an attack-plus-defense paper
- Freeze the threat model and attacker-capability statement; reviewers score against it.
- Re-run the adaptive-attack evaluation from logged configs so the PDF and artifact agree.
- Draft the ethics and responsible-disclosure section against what you actually did.
- Strip PDF metadata, tool authorship strings, and repository owner names from every link.
- Register the abstract early, then confirm the HotCRP PDF matches the registered abstract.
Format anchors
- CCS uses a dense two-column
sigconflayout; wide system diagrams, protocol figures, and multi-column result tables that fit a one-column draft overflow, so compress early. - The page and cap numbers above describe the 2026 cycle; treat every number as provisional and recheck the current CFP before relying on it.
Output format
text[CCS readiness] Ready / Needs fixes / Not ready [Blocking checks] <abstract-reg / page / anonymity / ethics / dual-submission / cap> [Threat-model risk] <one issue> [Desk-reject risk] <one issue> [Fix order] <ordered fixes before submission>
