Workshop on Active Defense and Deception
The 5th Workshop on Active Defense and Deception (AD&D) will take place on September 18, 2026, in Rome, Italy, co-located with the 31st European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) 2026.
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.
Important Dates
- Submission deadline (tentative): June 10, 2026
- Acceptance notice to authors: July 15, 2026
- Publication-ready papers submitted: July 31, 2026
- Workshop date: September 18, 2026
Call for contributions
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.
Policy Against the Use of Generative AI
In principle, generative AI is not allowed for submissions except for language polishing purposes. In the latter case, authors should acknowledge the usage of generative AI. If a submission is suspected to use generative AI tools, the authors will be contacted and the paper may risk a desk rejection. Furthermore, usage of AI is not allowed for the review process by the program committee.
Submission Guidelines
Submitted papers must comply with the LNCS template at the time of submission. Submitted papers should be at most 16 pages (using 10-point font), excluding the bibliography and well-marked appendices, and at most 20 pages total. Committee members are not required to read the appendices, so the paper should be intelligible without them. All submissions must be written in English.
Submissions must be uploaded to the following EasyChair website: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=esorics2026
Only PDF files will be accepted. Submissions are double-blind: no author names or affiliations may appear on the title page, and papers should avoid revealing authors’ identities in the text. Submissions not meeting these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.
Authors of accepted papers must agree with Springer LNCS copyright and are requested to ensure that their papers are presented at the workshop, and to complete the registration for workshop attendance.
Workshop Format
One author of each accepted contribution is expected to present the work at the workshop. The format is expected to include traditional conference-style presentations followed by questions and feedback from the audience. Interactive and engaging presentations are welcomed.
More information regarding speaking times, proceedings, and camera-ready requirements will be provided following notification to authors.
Student Scholarship by The Honeynet Project
We don’t think a limited budget should keep students from attending the Workshop on Active Defense and Deception. To help make the event more accessible, The Honeynet Project is offering a scholarship for selected university students.
Scholarship recipients will have their workshop registration covered by THP, allowing them to attend the AD&D workshop. The scholarship is open to undergraduate and graduate university students. To apply, please complete the application form.. We particularly encourage students from underrepresented groups to apply.
Organization
The 2026 program committee will be announced soon.
General chairs
- Denis Donadel, University of Verona, Italy
- Francesco Lupia, University of Calabria, Italy
Publicity chair
- Natalia Stakhanova, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Steering Committee
- Georgios Portokalidis, IMDEA Software
- Merve Sahin, SAP Security Research
- Nick Nikiforakis, Stony Brook University
- Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis, Technical University of Denmark
- Mauro Conti, University of Padua
- Andrea Pugliese, University of Calabria
Program Committee
- Merve Sahin, SAP Security Research
- Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis, Technical University of Denmark
- Massimo Merro, University of Verona
- Nicola Zannone, Eindhoven University of Technology
- Alessio Merlo, University School of Advanced Defense Studies
- Efrén López-Morales, New Mexico State University
- Roberto Doriguzzi Corin, Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK)
- Luis E. Salazar, University of California, Santa Cruz
- Alessandro Cantelli-Forti, Lab RaSS National Laboratory - CNIT
- Giacomo Longo, University School of Advanced Defense Studies
- Timothy Barron, Yale University
- Alessandro Brighente, University of Padua
- Billy Tsouvalas, Stony Brook University
- Shreyas Srinivasa, Terma A/S
- Carmelo Felicetti, University of Calabria
- Vincenzo De Angelis, University of Calabria
- Sara Lazzaro, University of Calabria
- Jassim Happa, Royal Holloway, University of London
- Arul Sagayam, Bloomberg
- Stefan Rass, Johannes Kepler University Linz
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