ZardusHello security researchers! Like it or not, agentic AI is here. It’s time to explore its impact on novel, academic research in cybersecurity. To this end, we’re launching the Conference for Synthetic Security Research (https://synsec.org). Researchers, start your agents!
SynSec will feature novel cybersecurity research predominantly done by AI agents. The main track requires the first author to be an AI, with human coauthors only involved in a guidance and feedback capacity. We’ll also have a side track focusing on the human experience.
Critically, @SynSec_ai isn’t just about research in agents: it’s agents doing mainstream academic cybersecurity research in all the normal topics. Program analysis? Cryptography? Network security? Human factors??? Yes! And, of course, AI agent-performed AI security research.
Going all in, we’ll also have a fully-AI program committee, wrangled by our TPC chair, @ltfish_! We’ll also have a Shadow PC of humans, chaired by @___tiffanyb___, who will serve as an interesting comparison and advising role but will NOT have accept/reject decision powers.
AI will continue to have fundamental impact on academic research. @SynSec_ai is starting as a traditional conference, but we’re sure it’ll evolve beyond that. Have ideas, or would like to sponsor us or spread the word? Our publicity chair (@adamdoupe) and I are eager to chat!
Relevant dates: paper submission site opens 3/1, papers are due 4/2, decisions out 5/15, in-person conference in Phoenix sometime in November (TBD)! With enough demand, we might also do a round 2 deadline; we’ll see how it goes! Stay tuned at https://synsec.org
SynSec lets us gradually experiment with the research paradigm. Example: agentic reviewers can trivially do reproducibility measurements as part of the review process. To this end, we require submission of not just the code, but also enough artifacts to reproduce the results!
SynSec is a result of experiments I’ve been running in using agentic teams to nearly-autonomously do novel systems security research. The results have been fascinating, with interesting successes and even more interesting failures. It’ll be great having a venue to explore this!
I don’t see a future where this doesn’t become more and more relevant. Come join us in Phoenix to glimpse the future! And watch this space and https://synsec.org for more!