CCS Topic Selection

Use this before writing. ACM CCS is the SIGSAC flagship: it rewards work with a concrete attacker, a defensible threat model, and evidence that survives an adversarial program committee. Decide venue by community and contribution type, never by prestige ranking.

Fit test

• Prefer CCS when the contribution is a broad computer-security result — a new attack class, a defense with measured cost, an applied-cryptography protocol, a systems or web-security mechanism, or a measurement study — aimed at the cross-area SIGSAC community.
• Route to IEEE S&P (Oakland) when the work suits that PC's taste for foundational or systematization framing and the November cycle fits your calendar better.
• Route to USENIX Security when the contribution is artifact-heavy systems security whose evidence lives in a runnable tool and open benchmark.
• Route to NDSS when the core is network- and distributed-system security (protocols, DNS, routing, malware infrastructure).
• Route to PETS/PoPETs when privacy is the primary lens rather than one property among many.
• Route to CRYPTO/EUROCRYPT when the contribution is cryptographic theory whose proof, not its deployment, is the result.

Fit signal table

Signal in the project	CCS reading
New attack with a clearly bounded adversary and demonstrated impact	Core fit — the house genre
Defense evaluated against adaptive attacks with deployment cost	Core fit
Applied crypto protocol with implementation and measured overhead	Core fit
Internet-scale or ecosystem measurement with validated sampling	Core fit
Pure cryptographic hardness proof, no system	CRYPTO/EUROCRYPT or a theory venue
Privacy-first metrics with no other security property	PETS/PoPETs

Vignette: where a side-channel result goes

A project extracts keys from a deployed TLS library via a microarchitectural side channel, with a proof-of-concept exploit and a constant-time patch. CCS reading: strong fit — a concrete attacker, measured leakage, and a defense with overhead numbers is exactly the CCS arc. Strip the exploit and keep only an abstract leakage bound, and it drifts toward a crypto theory venue; expand the network-measurement of vulnerable hosts into the whole story, and NDSS becomes plausible; foreground only the privacy harm to users, and PETS fits better.

Sharpening moves before committing

• Name the attacker: capabilities, knowledge, position, and what success means. If you cannot write the threat model in three sentences, the contribution is not yet CCS-shaped.
• Decide the contribution type — attack, defense, protocol, measurement, tool, or study — because reviewers grade each against a different evidence bar.
• Confirm the result fits the 12-page ACM sigconf body; CCS bodies are dense, and a paper needing 30 pages of proofs may belong at a journal or a theory venue.
• Scope drifts across cycles; scan the current CFP topic list and recent proceedings before final routing.

Output format

[Fit] strong CCS / possible CCS / better elsewhere
[Best venue] CCS / IEEE S&P / USENIX Security / NDSS / PETS / crypto venue / other
[Contribution type] attack / defense / protocol / measurement / tool / study
[Threat model in one line] <adversary capability and goal>
[Top rejection risk] <threat-model / novelty / evidence / ethics / scope>
[Next action] <sharpen threat model, add evidence, reframe, or switch venue>