SafeThings 2023
IEEE/ACM Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things
Co-located with CPS-IoT Week 2023 »
San Antonio, Texas USA, May 9, 2023
The Internet of Things has become increasingly popular and innovative. With the rise of connected devices, we have an opportunity to significantly improve the safety of legacy systems. For instance, insights from data across systems can be exploited to reduce accidents, improve air quality and support disaster events. IoT-based cyber-physical systems (CPS) also bring new risks that arise due to the unexpected interaction between systems and the larger number of attack vectors on these systems. These safety risks can arise in the context of use of medical devices, smart home appliance control, autonomous vehicle and intelligent transportation designs, or conflicts in policy execution at a societal scale.
The Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things seeks to bring together researchers to create solutions for the development of safe cyber-physical systems. As safety is inherently linked with the security and privacy of a system, we also seek contributions in these areas that address safety concerns. We seek to develop a community that systematically dissects the vulnerabilities and risks exposed by these emerging CPSs, and creates tools, algorithms, frameworks, and systems that help in the development of safe systems.
We seek contributions across domains – autonomous vehicles, smart homes, medical devices, smart grid, intelligent transportation; and across disciplines – systems, control, human-computer interaction, privacy, security, reliability, machine learning, and verification.
Important Dates
| Paper Submission Deadline | |
| Acceptance Notification | |
| Camera-ready Submission Deadline | |
| Workshop | May 26th, 2023 |
Call for Papers
As the traditionally segregated systems are brought online for next-generation connected applications, we have an opportunity to significantly improve the safety of legacy systems. For instance, insights from data across systems can be exploited to reduce accidents, improve air quality and support disaster events. Cyber-physical systems (CPS) also bring new risks that arise due to the unexpected interaction between systems and the environment. These safety risks arise because of information that distracts users while driving, software errors in medical devices, corner cases in data-driven control, compromised sensors in drones or conflicts in societal policies. Accordingly, the Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things (or SafeThings, for brevity) seeks to bring researchers and practitioners that are actively exploring system design, modeling, verification, authentication approaches to provide safety guarantees in the Internet of Things (IoT). The workshop welcomes contributions that integrate hardware and software systems provided by disparate vendors, particularly those that have humans in the loop. As safety is inherently linked with security and privacy, we also seek contributions in these areas that address safety concerns. With the SafeThings workshop, we seek to develop a community that systematically dissects the vulnerabilities and risks exposed by these emerging CPSes, and create tools, algorithms, frameworks, and systems that help in the development of safe systems.
The scope of SafeThings includes safety topics as it relates to an individual’s health (physical, mental), society (air pollution, toxicity, disaster events), or the environment (species preservation, global warming, oil spills). The workshop considers safety from a human perspective, and thus, does not include topics such as thread safety or memory safety in its scope.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following categories:
- Verification of safety in IoT/CPS platforms
- Authentication in IoT/CPS settings
- Adversarial machine learning and testing of IoT/CPS systems
- Secure perception, localization, and planning in autonomous systems (e.g., autonomous vehicles and drones)
- Sensors/analog and network protocol security in IoT/CPS systems
- Compliance with legal, health, and environmental policies
- Conflict resolution between IoT applications
- Secure connectivity and updates in IoT/CPS
- Secure integration of hardware and software systems
- Privacy challenges in IoT/CPS settings
- Privacy preserving data sharing and analysis
- Resiliency against attacks and faults
- Safety in human-in-the-loop systems
- Support for IoT/CPS development – debugging tools, emulators, testbeds
- Usable security and privacy for IoT/CPS platforms
- Smart homes, smart buildings and smart city security and privacy issues
In addition, application domains of interest include, but are not limited to autonomous vehicles and transportation infrastructure; medical CPS and public health; smart buildings, smart grid and smart cities.
The PC will select a best paper award for work that distinguishes itself in moving the security and privacy of IoT/CPS forward through novel attacks or defenses.
Call for Demos
In addition to presentation of accepted papers, SafeThings will include a demo session that is designed to allow researchers to share demonstrations of their systems that include CPS/IoT security and safety as a major design goal. Demos of attacks are also welcome.
Submission Instructions
Submitted papers must be in English, unpublished, and must not be currently under review for any other publication. Manuscripts should be no more than 6 pages, including all figures, tables, and references in ACM two-column conference proceedings style (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template/), using US Letter (8.5-inch x 11-inch) paper size. Demos must be at most 1 single-spaced, double column 8.5” x 11” page, and have “Demo:” in their titles. All figures must fit within these limits. Papers that do not meet the size and formatting requirements will not be reviewed. All papers must be in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) and submitted through the web submission form via the submission link below. The review process is double-blind.
Full Papers: 6 pages including all figures, tables, and references.
Demos: 1 page (with “Demo:” in the title).
Submission Page »
ACM’s Publications Policies
By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.
Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.
Organization
General Chairs
Yuan Tian (University of Califonia, Los Angeles, USA)
Dave (Jing) Tian (Purdue University, USA)
Program Committee Chairs
Saman Zonouz (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Z. Berkay Celik (Purdue University, USA)
Web Chair
Faysal Hossain Shezan (University of Virginia, USA)
Publicity Chair
Habiba Farrukh (Purdue University, USA)
davejingtian.org 