Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium 2026 Call for Papers

[Janine Schneider]

Dear colleagues,

We are excited to announce the 2nd Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium (DFDS). This symposium provides a unique platform for doctoral students to share their (early-stage) research, engage in discussions with peers, and build connections within the digital forensics’ community. The Doctoral Symposium is co-located with DFRWS EU 2026, taking place 24th-27th March 2026. For further details, please visit https://dfrws.org/conferences/dfds-2026/.

Topics of Interest:
The Doctoral Symposium is open to fresh insights that challenge the current boundaries of digital forensics. The submissions can cover a broad range of topics related to digital forensics, including, but not limited to:
- Anti-forensics and counter-anti-forensics
- AI-assisted digital forensics
- Case studies and trend reports
- Cloud and virtualized environment forensics
- Covert channels (e.g. TOR, VPN)
- Cryptocurrency investigation
- Development of digital forensic infrastructures
- Digital evidence sharing and exchange
- Digital evidence and the law
- Digital forensic analysis of AI models
- Digital forensic preparedness / readiness
- Digital investigation case management
- Digital forensic tool validation
- Digital forensic triage / survey
- Event reconstruction methods and tools
- Forensics analysis and visualization of Big Data
- Forensic analysis of anonymous networks
- Forensic analysis of databases
- Implanted medical devices
- Incident response on malware and targeted attacks
- Machine learning and data mining for digital evidence extraction/query
- Memory acquisition and analysis
- Methodology for digital forensic processes
- Mobile and embedded device forensics
- Multimedia (image, audio, video) data analysis
- Network and distributed system forensics
- Non-traditional forensic scenarios / contexts
- SCADA / industrial control systems
- Smart power grid forensics
- Steganography and steganalysis
- Smart building forensics
- Vehicle forensics (e.g., drones, cars)
- Visualization methods and tools for forensic analysis

Submission Information:
The Doctoral Symposium invites contributions in the form of Short Research Papers typically 6 pages in length, with up to 8 pages tolerated in exceptional circumstances (excluding references). They must be original contributions, must not be under simultaneous publication review elsewhere, the lead author must be a student, and must align with the topics of interest of the symposium. Survey/literature review papers are not suitable for publication at DFDS.

Papers must be written in English, blinded, and must not exceed 8 single-spaced, two-column pages. This page limit does NOT include references and appendix, although references and appendix should be limited to one page to the extent possible (= 9 pages in total). Papers must be submitted as PDF files. The preferred reference style is Harvard. Please use the ACM LaTeX sigconf proceedings template (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template) for your article. Fonts used in the template cannot be substituted; margin adjustments are not allowed.

All submissions undergo an initial screening by the TPC Chair(s) ensuring relevance to the event and compliance with the submission criteria. Once approved, submissions will undergo a “double-blind” review process, therefore, the version submitted for review must not contain the names or affiliations of the authors and should anonymize content that readily identifies the authors, such as references to tools developed by the authors. When referring to their own previous work, authors should use the third person instead of the first person (i.e., “Smith and Jones [2] previously determined…” instead of “We [2] previously determined…”). Please note that the Doctoral Symposium submissions will undergo a separate review process (and be published in a separate proceedings) compared to the full papers of the main DFRWS EU conference.

All contributions must be submitted to the Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium track through the EasyChair site at https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=dfrwseu2026.

Articles will be published with ACM as DFDS '26: Proceedings of the Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium. Please note that the publication is subject to an ACM Open Access Fee. For institutions participating in ACM Open the publication is free of charge.

At least one full DFRWS EU registration per paper is required before submitting the camera-ready version, i.e., before the camera-ready submission deadline. Please note, this DFRWS EU registration is separate to any ACM ICPS publishing charge (should it apply). Authors MUST present their work in person at the symposium.

For questions related to the doctoral symposium, please send an email to: janine.schneider (at) dfrws (dot) org

Deadlines:
October 31, 2025        Full papers: Submission of Abstract & Title via EasyChair
November 07, 2025    Full papers: Final submission via EasyChair
December 12, 2025    Acceptance notification

Previous Submissions:
Previous submissions can be found at https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3712716, providing examples of the paper format and previously accepted topics.

We warmly invite you to submit your original research and to share this announcement with others who may be interested.

Best regards,

The DFDS Organizing Committee

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Yours sincerely,

Dr. Janine Schneider (she/her)

Chair of Cybersecurity
University of Augsburg, Institute of Computer Science
 
Eichleitnerstraße 30, 86159 Augsburg
T: +49 821 598-2973
W: https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/fakultaet/fai/informatik/prof/forsec/