CCS Topic Selection
Use this before writing. ACM CCS is the SIGSAC flagship: it rewards work with a concrete attacker, a defensible threat model, and evidence that survives an adversarial program committee. Decide venue by community and contribution type, never by prestige ranking.
Fit test
- Prefer CCS when the contribution is a broad computer-security result — a new attack class, a defense with measured cost, an applied-cryptography protocol, a systems or web-security mechanism, or a measurement study — aimed at the cross-area SIGSAC community.
- Route to IEEE S&P (Oakland) when the work suits that PC's taste for foundational or systematization framing and the November cycle fits your calendar better.
- Route to USENIX Security when the contribution is artifact-heavy systems security whose evidence lives in a runnable tool and open benchmark.
- Route to NDSS when the core is network- and distributed-system security (protocols, DNS, routing, malware infrastructure).
- Route to PETS/PoPETs when privacy is the primary lens rather than one property among many.
- Route to CRYPTO/EUROCRYPT when the contribution is cryptographic theory whose proof, not its deployment, is the result.
Fit signal table
| Signal in the project | CCS reading |
|---|---|
| New attack with a clearly bounded adversary and demonstrated impact | Core fit — the house genre |
| Defense evaluated against adaptive attacks with deployment cost | Core fit |
| Applied crypto protocol with implementation and measured overhead | Core fit |
| Internet-scale or ecosystem measurement with validated sampling | Core fit |
| Pure cryptographic hardness proof, no system | CRYPTO/EUROCRYPT or a theory venue |
| Privacy-first metrics with no other security property | PETS/PoPETs |
Vignette: where a side-channel result goes
A project extracts keys from a deployed TLS library via a microarchitectural side channel, with a proof-of-concept exploit and a constant-time patch. CCS reading: strong fit — a concrete attacker, measured leakage, and a defense with overhead numbers is exactly the CCS arc. Strip the exploit and keep only an abstract leakage bound, and it drifts toward a crypto theory venue; expand the network-measurement of vulnerable hosts into the whole story, and NDSS becomes plausible; foreground only the privacy harm to users, and PETS fits better.
Sharpening moves before committing
- Name the attacker: capabilities, knowledge, position, and what success means. If you cannot write the threat model in three sentences, the contribution is not yet CCS-shaped.
- Decide the contribution type — attack, defense, protocol, measurement, tool, or study — because reviewers grade each against a different evidence bar.
- Confirm the result fits the 12-page ACM sigconf body; CCS bodies are dense, and a paper needing 30 pages of proofs may belong at a journal or a theory venue.
- Scope drifts across cycles; scan the current CFP topic list and recent proceedings before final routing.
Output format
text[Fit] strong CCS / possible CCS / better elsewhere [Best venue] CCS / IEEE S&P / USENIX Security / NDSS / PETS / crypto venue / other [Contribution type] attack / defense / protocol / measurement / tool / study [Threat model in one line] <adversary capability and goal> [Top rejection risk] <threat-model / novelty / evidence / ethics / scope> [Next action] <sharpen threat model, add evidence, reframe, or switch venue>
