The 5th ACM Workshop on Recurring Malcode (WORM 2007)

The workshop program can be found here.

For online registration to the workshop, please click here.

Internet-wide infectious epidemics have emerged as one of the leading threats to information security and service availability. Self-propagating threats, often termed worms, exploit software weaknesses, hardware limitations, Internet topology, and the open Internet communication model to compromise large numbers of networked systems. Malware is increasingly used as a beachhead to launch further malicious activities, such as installing spyware, deploying phishing servers and spam relays, or performing information espionage. Unfortunately, current operational practices still face significant challenges in containing these threats as evidenced by the rise in automated botnet networks and the continued presence of worms released years ago. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for exchanging ideas, increasing understanding, and relating experiences on malicious code from a wide range of communities, including academia, industry, and the government.

We are soliciting papers from researchers and practitioners on subjects including, but not limited to:

• Automatic malcode detection
• Malicious code characterization
• Botnet detection and disruption
• Malcode reverse engineering
• Modeling and analysis of propagation dynamics
• Forensic methods of attribution
• Threat assessment
• Reactive countermeasures
• Proactive malware defenses
• Significant operational experiences
• Measurement studies
• New threats and related challenges

WORM aims to be a true workshop, with a primary goal of fostering the development of preliminary work and helping nucleate a malcode research community. To this end, WORM aims to bring together both academic researchers and practitioners that fight malware in the fields. WORM is open to two classes of submissions:

1. Research papers

Research papers describe original work and should be at most 8 pages long (double column) in an 11-point font with at least 1-inch margins. Significantly shorter papers will also be considered in terms of the degree to which they might contribute to the workshop's goals of fostering a malcode research community. Papers should list all authors and their affiliations; in case of multiple authors, the contact author must be indicated (WORM does not require anonymized submissions). All accepted papers will appear in the ACM WORM Proceedings.

Note that all papers that are submitted must be original unpublished work and must not be simultaneously submitted or under review for any other workshop, conference or journal (including ACM CCS). Any paper found to be in violation of these rules will be rejected without review. (We may share information about submissions with the program chairs of other conferences considering papers during the review period.) Papers accompanied by non-disclosure agreement forms will not be considered. All submissions are treated as confidential, both as a matter of policy and in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

2. Panel proposals

Panel proposals must include the title of the panel, a 2-paragraph abstract describing the topic and why it should be of interest to the WORM community, and a list of panelists that have agreed to serve on the panel. Panels are expected to be at most 1 hour long, comprised of short presentations by the panelists followed by discussion among panel members and the audience; other formats may be used, but should be described in the proposal.

Please submit both research papers and panel proposals via the following link: Paper submission

24 June, 2007 (23:59 PST)	Extended paper submission deadline
7 August, 2007	Notification of acceptance
22 August, 2007	Camera-ready papers due
2 November, 2007	Workshop co-located with CCS in Alexandria, VA, USA

Program Committee

• Christopher Kruegel, Technical University Vienna, Austria (Program Chair)
• Kostas Anagnostakis, Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore
• Mike Bailey, University of Michigan, USA
• Herbert Bos, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Mihai Christodorescu, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
• Manuel Costa, Microsoft Research, United Kingdom
• Thorsten Holz, University of Mannheim, Germany
• Angelos Keromytis, Columbia University, USA
• Engin Kirda, Technical University Vienna, Austria
• Wenke Lee, Georgia Tech, USA
• Jose Nazario, Arbor Networks, USA
• Moheeb Rajab, Johns Hopkins University, USA
• Stefan Savage, University of California, San Diego, USA
• Anil Somayaji, Carleton University, Canada
• Dawn Song, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Vinod Yegneswaran, SRI International, USA

Local Organization

• Xuxian Jiang, George Mason University, USA

If you have any questions, feel free to send an email to the Program Chair.