--- name: brycewang-stanford/ccs-review-process source: https://app.decimal.ai/s/brycewang-stanford-ccs-review-process@1/SKILL.md source_sha256: 6c97cd65a2d0 --- # CCS Review Process Use this to reason about review-stage strategy. Reopen the current CFP, the cycle's HotCRP site, the reviewer guidelines if posted, and the ethics policy before making process claims. ## Process model - CCS runs two review cycles per year on HotCRP, each with abstract registration, full-paper submission, review, a rebuttal window, and notification. - Reviewers assess threat-model soundness, novelty, technical correctness, evidence quality, ethics and responsible disclosure, and significance to the security community. - Decisions are not binary: CCS 2026 used accept, minor revision (authors revise for the same cycle under a shepherd or check), and reject. A first-cycle reject cannot return that year. - An ethics or disclosure concern can sink an otherwise strong paper; the ethics reviewer's view carries weight independent of technical scores. - Accepted papers publish in the ACM Digital Library proceedings, so camera-ready and metadata compliance matter as much as the initial decision. ## Who reviews here - The pool is adversarial by training: expect at least one reviewer to attack your threat model, look for the assumption that makes the attack easy, and probe whether the defense was tested against an adaptive attacker. - CCS is broad, so a paper may draw reviewers from an adjacent sub-area; the threat model and intro must orient a web-security reviewer to a crypto result and vice versa. - Borderline papers usually fall on one of three edges: an attacker assumption too strong to be interesting, a defense never adapted against, or an ethics gap left unaddressed. ## Scoring leverage table | Review dimension | What raises it | What sinks it | |---|---|---| | Threat model | A tight, realistic adversary stated up front | Capabilities that quietly grow to make the attack work | | Novelty | An attack class or guarantee the literature lacked | An increment over a cited paper with no new idea | | Evidence | End-to-end demonstration against a real target | Lab-only results against a strawman | | Ethics | Disclosure done, harm minimized, reasoned in the paper | Real-world harm with no disclosure or IRB reasoning | ## Stage-by-stage realism - Initial reviews: triage by what the meta-reviewer will weigh — threat model and evidence — not by reviewer tone. - Rebuttal: the window is short and structured; one crisp answer to the decision-critical objection beats an exhaustive point-by-point. - Decision: the meta-review synthesizes; one unresolved threat-model or ethics objection outweighs several resolved clarity complaints. - Minor revision: treat it as conditional acceptance with a checklist, not a debate; do exactly what the shepherd asks within the cycle's timeline. ## Output format ```text [Current stage] submitted / reviews / rebuttal / decision / revision / camera-ready [Decision actors] [Likely leverage] [Forbidden moves] [Next response move] ```