[Deadline June 10] Call for Papers: Workshop on Active Defense and Deception (AD&D 2026)
3 views
Skip to first unread message
Natalia Stakhanova
Apr 23, 2026, 11:14:21 AMApr 23
to ias-opportunities
**********************************************************************
5th Workshop on Active Defense and Deception (AD&D 2026) co-located with ESORICS 2026
Rome, Italy -- September 18, 2026
https://adnd.work
**********************************************************************
Important Dates
----------------
Submission Deadline: June 10 (11.59pm AoE)
Notification: July 15
Camera-Ready Deadline: July 31
Workshop date: September 18
Overview
---------
The AD&D workshop intends to promote Active Defense (AD) as an additional layer of protection against the imbalance of active attackers and passive defenders. In particular, the "assume breach" mentality is becoming the new normal, proactively interacting with adversaries using deception, system modification and run-time defensive mechanisms can offer a very viable method for detecting sophisticated multi-stage attacks. Although this methodology has great promise, AD is currently being underutilized because there are several barriers preventing wider industry acceptance such as: developing methods for measuring the value and effectiveness of AD, implementing AD in current systems, and understanding what motivates attacker behavior.
Therefore, the purpose of the AD&D workshop is to bring together multiple disciplines including Information Security, Cognitive Science and Psychology to help develop solutions to overcome some of the above mentioned barriers and increase adoption. More broadly, the Workshop wants to provide a forum to discuss issues associated with evaluating AD, influencing attacker decisions making and designing deceptions which have long-term viability with the ultimate goal of moving AD from theoretical concepts into practical applications.
Organizing Team
----------------
General Chairs
Denis Donadel (University of Verona)
Francesco Lupia (Universty of Calabria)
Publicity Chair
Natalia Stakhanova (University of Saskatchewan)
Steering Committee
Georgios Portokalidis (IMDEA Software)
Merve Sahin (SAP)
Nick Nikiforakis (Stony Brook University)
Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis (Technical University of Denmark)
Types of Submissions Solicited
------------------------------------------
AD&D accepts three types of contributions:
- Research Papers: Traditional research papers with novel contributions are accepted in full and short paper formats.
- Position Papers: Position papers should present novel, preliminary research ideas or perspectives that aim to spark discussion and exploration within the community, and should include the text "Position Paper:" at the beginning of the title.
- Experience Papers: Experience papers should share novel insights, findings, or lessons learned from real-world applications or deployments in the context of active defense, and should include the text "Experience Paper:" at the beginning of the title.
The full research papers must be no longer than 16 pages, while short research papers, position papers, and experience papers must be no longer than 10 pages. Page limits including all figures but exclude bibliography and well-marked appendices, which however cannot exceed 4 pages. Note that reviewers are not required to read the appendices.
All submissions must be anonymized. The program committee will evaluate submissions based on relevance, impact, and the potential to spark discussion at the workshop. Interdisciplinary work is appreciated and encouraged.
Areas of Interest
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- All types of active defense methods: moving target defense, dynamic and runtime defenses, and deception use cases
- Attacker engagement in different stages of the attack lifecycle
- Measuring the overhead of active defense
- Experiment designs and frameworks to measure the effectiveness of active defense
- Feedback from real-world uses of active defense, canaries, and honeypots: what worked and what did not?
- Automation of active defense and deception
- Monitoring, alerting, containment, and deceptive response strategies
- Ensuring longevity and continuation of deception
- Attackers' reasoning, decision making, and behavior patterns
- Cognitive approaches that attackers can get prepared against
- Deceiving humans vs. deceiving computers: how can cognitive biases of attackers be influenced through computers?
- Deception for offense: social engineering, phishing, disinformation, dark patterns in UI/UX, and other manipulation techniques
- Adapting offensive deceptive techniques to defense
- Interdisciplinary research methods to improve active defense via attackers’ human factors
- Authors are encouraged to contribute research that addresses these topics and pushes the boundaries of knowledge in Active Defense and Deception. Papers reporting industry experiences and case studies will also be encouraged.
Note that we exclude the concepts of preemptive attacks, hacking back, and counter-attacks.
For further details and submission guidelines, please visit:
https://adnd.work/index.html#call-for-contributions
5th Workshop on Active Defense and Deception (AD&D 2026) co-located with ESORICS 2026
Rome, Italy -- September 18, 2026
https://adnd.work
**********************************************************************
Important Dates
----------------
Submission Deadline: June 10 (11.59pm AoE)
Notification: July 15
Camera-Ready Deadline: July 31
Workshop date: September 18
Overview
---------
The AD&D workshop intends to promote Active Defense (AD) as an additional layer of protection against the imbalance of active attackers and passive defenders. In particular, the "assume breach" mentality is becoming the new normal, proactively interacting with adversaries using deception, system modification and run-time defensive mechanisms can offer a very viable method for detecting sophisticated multi-stage attacks. Although this methodology has great promise, AD is currently being underutilized because there are several barriers preventing wider industry acceptance such as: developing methods for measuring the value and effectiveness of AD, implementing AD in current systems, and understanding what motivates attacker behavior.
Therefore, the purpose of the AD&D workshop is to bring together multiple disciplines including Information Security, Cognitive Science and Psychology to help develop solutions to overcome some of the above mentioned barriers and increase adoption. More broadly, the Workshop wants to provide a forum to discuss issues associated with evaluating AD, influencing attacker decisions making and designing deceptions which have long-term viability with the ultimate goal of moving AD from theoretical concepts into practical applications.
Organizing Team
----------------
General Chairs
Denis Donadel (University of Verona)
Francesco Lupia (Universty of Calabria)
Publicity Chair
Natalia Stakhanova (University of Saskatchewan)
Steering Committee
Georgios Portokalidis (IMDEA Software)
Merve Sahin (SAP)
Nick Nikiforakis (Stony Brook University)
Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis (Technical University of Denmark)
Types of Submissions Solicited
------------------------------------------
AD&D accepts three types of contributions:
- Research Papers: Traditional research papers with novel contributions are accepted in full and short paper formats.
- Position Papers: Position papers should present novel, preliminary research ideas or perspectives that aim to spark discussion and exploration within the community, and should include the text "Position Paper:" at the beginning of the title.
- Experience Papers: Experience papers should share novel insights, findings, or lessons learned from real-world applications or deployments in the context of active defense, and should include the text "Experience Paper:" at the beginning of the title.
The full research papers must be no longer than 16 pages, while short research papers, position papers, and experience papers must be no longer than 10 pages. Page limits including all figures but exclude bibliography and well-marked appendices, which however cannot exceed 4 pages. Note that reviewers are not required to read the appendices.
All submissions must be anonymized. The program committee will evaluate submissions based on relevance, impact, and the potential to spark discussion at the workshop. Interdisciplinary work is appreciated and encouraged.
Areas of Interest
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- All types of active defense methods: moving target defense, dynamic and runtime defenses, and deception use cases
- Attacker engagement in different stages of the attack lifecycle
- Measuring the overhead of active defense
- Experiment designs and frameworks to measure the effectiveness of active defense
- Feedback from real-world uses of active defense, canaries, and honeypots: what worked and what did not?
- Automation of active defense and deception
- Monitoring, alerting, containment, and deceptive response strategies
- Ensuring longevity and continuation of deception
- Attackers' reasoning, decision making, and behavior patterns
- Cognitive approaches that attackers can get prepared against
- Deceiving humans vs. deceiving computers: how can cognitive biases of attackers be influenced through computers?
- Deception for offense: social engineering, phishing, disinformation, dark patterns in UI/UX, and other manipulation techniques
- Adapting offensive deceptive techniques to defense
- Interdisciplinary research methods to improve active defense via attackers’ human factors
- Authors are encouraged to contribute research that addresses these topics and pushes the boundaries of knowledge in Active Defense and Deception. Papers reporting industry experiences and case studies will also be encouraged.
Note that we exclude the concepts of preemptive attacks, hacking back, and counter-attacks.
For further details and submission guidelines, please visit:
https://adnd.work/index.html#call-for-contributions
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages