The fifth annual DFRWS APAC 2025 will be held Monday, November 10 through Wednesday, November 12, as a hybrid event in Seoul, South Korea, running concurrently with attendees participating in satellite sites within APAC.

Conference Location:

Seoul, South Korea

Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is a dynamic city where centuries-old traditions coexist with cutting-edge trends driven by modern K-culture. As the political, economic, and cultural heart of the nation, it thrives as a vibrant metropolis that draws people from all corners of the country. With its rich history, diverse artistic expressions, renowned cuisine, and world-class shopping, Seoul offers an unparalleled experience, making it a distinct global destination.

November 10, 2025 to November 12, 2025

Location

DFRWS APAC 2025 will take place at the COEX Magok Le West (143 Magokjungang-ro, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, South Korea) in the Magok district, which is emerging as a new business hub in Seoul. Located in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, the Magok Industrial Complex serves as a key R&D area, driving the development of next-generation technologies, fostering strategic industries, and promoting international cooperation. With its prime location near the airport, cutting-edge industrial ecosystem, abundant green spaces, and state-of-the-art infrastructure, Magok is quickly becoming a sought-after destination for leading companies and research institutions.

❖ Main Conference (+ Workshops)

COEX Magok Le West, 143 Magokjungang-ro, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, South Korea

❖ Lunch

11 restaurants located within COEX Magok

All registered participants will receive a lunch voucher that can be used at any of the 11 designated restaurants located within the conference building. Each restaurant offers a different style of cuisine — from Korean and Japanese to Asian fusion and American — allowing participants to enjoy a variety of options during the conference.

For more information, please refer to the detailed restaurant guide page (TBD), which includes each restaurant’s location, name, main menu items, and allergen information, and detailed instructions on how to use the lunch vouchers.

❖ Gata Dinner (Awards Banquet + Forensics Rodeo)

Transportation

To attend the conference in South Korea, there are two international airport options: Incheon International Airport (ICN) and Gimpo International Airport (GMP).
Incheon International Airport (ICN) is located approximately 40 kilometers from the venue and takes about 40 minutes by car via Expressway 130. Gimpo International Airport is much closer—only about 3 kilometers away—and it takes around 10 minutes by car using city roads.
While GMP is the closest airport to the conference venue, most international flights arrive at ICN. Fortunately, both airports are well connected to the city through bus, subway and airport express train lines that stop near the venue, making transportation easy and convenient. For example, there are convenient ground transportation options available from ICN:

❖ By Train from ICN

Airport Railroad Express (AREX) Train – approx. 50 min
Get off at Magongnaru Station (Exit No. 2 or 6) → 200 meters, 5 min on foot to the venue

❖ By Bus from ICN

Seoul Airport Bus No. 6003 – approx. 50 min
Get off at Magok Station (Metro Line 5) → 750 meters, 10-15 min on foot to the venue

Accommodation

The Magok district offers a variety of hotels and accommodation options. The following hotels are all within walking distance of the venue and have been selected to meet different budgets and preferences.

• Mercure Ambassador Seoul Magok (4-star⭐⭐⭐⭐) [link]

Located within the same complex as the conference venue, this hotel offers the most convenient access for attendees.

A special rate is available for conference participants during the conference period; however, depending on the booking date, it may be cheaper to reserve through the official Accor website or other online booking platforms.

We recommend comparing prices and choosing the most cost-effective option. If you would like to book using the special rate provided by the hotel, please click here.
Note: When using the link above, please make sure to set the dates to the conference period in order to view available rooms.

• Courtyard by Marriott Seoul Botanic Park (4-star ⭐⭐⭐⭐) [link]

About a 5-minute walk from the venue, this hotel is located next to Seoul Botanic Park. Please note that no special rate is offered for conference participants.

• Hotel MFELICE (3-star ⭐⭐⭐) [link]

• The First Stay Hotel (3-star ⭐⭐⭐) [link]

These hotels are located a bit farther from the venue but offer more affordable rates. Both are about a 25-minute walk from the venue or roughly 10 minutes by local bus (Routes 6645 or 6648).

Only The First Stay Hotel offers a special rate for DFRWS APAC 2025. To book, complete the hotel’s reservation form and email it to rsvn<at>thefirststayhotel<dot>com with [DFRWS APAC 2025] in the subject. Two room types (Standard Twin/Double) are offered at the same rate: 95,000 KRW (Sun–Thu) and 129,000 KRW (Fri–Sat). If available, the hotel will email a confirmation. Payment is made at check-in.

Travel Arrangements for International Visitors

Nationals of visa-waiver countries can enter the Republic of Korea without a visa for short-term stays (up to 90 days), including for conference participation. However, unless exempted, travelers must obtain K-ETA (Korea Electronic Travel Authorization) approval prior to boarding their flight. For reference, travelers from the following 22 countries are temporarily exempt from K-ETA until December 31, 2025.

Asia (5): Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, Singapore, Taiwan
Americas (2): Canada, United States
Europe (13): Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
Oceania (2): Australia, New Zealand

Please note that even if you are from a K-ETA exempt country, you may still choose to apply for K-ETA in order to receive certain benefits—such as being exempt from submitting an arrival card upon entry.

If you are from a K-ETA exempt country and do not apply for K-ETA, you will be required to complete an Arrival Card upon entry. This can be done either by filling out the electronic Arrival Card (available from 3 days before your arrival) or by completing a paper form upon arrival. Don’t worry if you have not submitted the e-Arrival Card in advance—you can always fill out the paper version at the airport.

Nationals of non-visa waiver countries must apply for a short-term visa prior to entering the Republic of Korea.

Below is a list of useful websites for your visit to Korea:

KOREA VISA PORTAL
Korea Tourism Organization

Keynotes

25 Years of Digital Forensics at DFRWS: Are We Truly Safer?

Dr. Insoo Lee | Director | Digital Forensics Research Institute at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office of the Republic of Korea

Twenty-five years have passed since the Road Map for Digital Forensic Research was first published—but are we truly safer? This keynote critically examines the persistent gap between investigative practice and academic research, and reveals how the lack of collaboration undermines the pursuit of justice. Academia often approaches digital forensic issues in a fragmented and narrowly focused manner, while real-world investigations are far more complex, dynamic, and unpredictable. This disconnect threatens the reliability of digital evidence and erodes public trust.

The presentation calls for a renewed focus on the realities of investigative practice and urges the development of integrated, multidisciplinary solutions. It emphasizes the need to strengthen the broader digital forensics ecosystem across academia, industry, government, and law enforcement. In particular, the role of industry is vital—not only in developing forensic tools and platforms, but also in ensuring transparency, scalability, and responsiveness to real-world investigative needs. Without industry’s active engagement in validation, standardization, and ethical design, the field risks becoming fragmented and opacity.

To address these systemic shortcomings, the keynote proposes the establishment of a collaborative platform to unite all stakeholders. Only through deeper cooperation and institutional support can we move toward a future grounded not just in technological advancement, but also in justice, trust, and societal resilience.

In this DFRWS keynote, Dr. Lee reflects on 25 years of digital forensics, critically examines its societal impact, and proposes a bold institutional vision: the establishment of a national digital forensics institute built on collaboration, trust, and justice.

About Dr. Insoo Lee:

Dr. Insoo Lee currently serves as the Director of the Digital Forensics Research Institute at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office of the Republic of Korea and holds a concurrent faculty position at Seoul National University. He studied mathematics and cryptography at Yonsei University and Korea University, and began his career at KISA (Korea Internet & Security Agency), where he conducted pioneering research on national standard cryptographic primitives.

He later joined a cryptographic startup, where he developed security products and solutions that were widely adopted across public and private sectors.. At the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, Dr. Lee has planned and led numerous digital forensic R&D projects, serving as the principal architect of Korea’s national forensic infrastructure—including platforms such as D-NET and NDFaaS.

His work bridges technology, policy, and investigative practice, shaping the future of forensic services in Korea.

Digital Forensics at Scale – Malware lessons Learned from the Bhima Koregaon Case

Robert Jan Mora | Principal Threat Investigator | Volexity

In this keynote Robert will address his involvement in digital forensics, why he favours anchored narratives investigation techniques, and his involvement with the DFRWS organization. He is a long-time member of DFRWS ever since he participated in their first memory forensics challenge in 2005.

In his talk Robert will primarily focus on the infamous Bhima Koregaon case and the almost three-year journey it took him to get some serious defects addressed in our community’s Digital Forensic Guidelines.

This talk will also explore how to make sure that we detect (advanced) threat actors by leveraging memory forensics in our cases in the future.

About Robert Jan Mora:

Robert Jan Mora is a principal threat investigator at Volexity. He studied IT-Auditing at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) and is a Registered IT-Auditor (RE) with NOREA. He used to manage the Threat and Analytics team at Shell. He also performed malware forensics in some high-profile breach investigations and security assessments for governments and corporations in previous roles. In addition, he tracks nation-state threat actors for fun and assesses digital forensic candidates who apply as digital forensic expert witnesses for the Netherlands Register of Court Experts (NRGD) and the Dutch Forensic Institute (NFI). He is also a long-time member of the program committee of the Digital Forensic Research Workshop (DFRWS) EU conference.

Participation

DFRWS invites contributions in the categories listed below. The submission details are listed below under SUBMISSION INFORMATION.

FULL RESEARCH PAPERS that align with the conference topics will undergo a double-blinded peer review process. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and can be published for inclusion in a special issue of Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation (Elsevier).

PRESENTATIONS & DEMOS require a brief proposal (~500 words; not a full paper) and undergo a light review process to identify content of high interest to DFRWS attendees and to screen out sales-oriented material. Accepted proposals will be allocated a ~15-minute presentation slot during the conference.

POSTERS provide an opportunity to present ongoing research and discuss preliminary results with the digital forensics community during the conference. Posters may include early findings, research ideas, or a brief demonstration of a prototype. While posters will not be subject to formal peer review and will not be included in the published proceedings, they will be made available on the conference website. Authors will also have the opportunity to present their posters during breaks to engage with attendees and receive feedback from the community.

Poster Specifications & Print Guidelines

Poster Dimensions: 48″ x 36″ or 36″ x 48″
File Format: .pdf
Graphic Resolution: Minimum 300 DPI
Font Size: Minimum for 14pt
Paper finish: Satin
Mounting: Foam Core

WORKSHOPS can range from 2 to 4 hours in length (please indicate your preferred duration) and should ideally involve hands-on participation by attendees, enabling an in-depth exploration of tools and techniques relevant to the DFRWS community. Workshops may focus on cutting-edge research projects, practical tips and techniques for widely used tools, or any content that would be of clear benefit to attendees. Proposals based on research previously presented at DFRWS or involving specialized hardware are especially encouraged.

PRESENTATION DELIVERY MODE

All presentations must be delivered in-person from the primary conference venue in Seoul, South Korea. Delivery remotely may be accepted by the organizing committee in exceptional circumstances, at the discretion of the organizing committee.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

We ask you to submit all contributions via EasyChair (select the appropriate track during submission). Please make sure to follow the submission criteria (https://dfrws.org/submission-criteria/) on the website. Organizers may reject work that does not follow the listed criteria.

Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=dfrwsapac2025

All deadlines are at the end of the stated day at 23:59 using the Anywhere on Earth (AOE) convention.

Please take a look at the DEADLINES section below for specific dates.

For any queries related to your submissions, please contact us through:
asanka.sayakkara <at> dfrws <dot> org (TPC Chair)
priyanka <at> dfrws <dot> org (TPC Co-Chair)

Topics of Interest

The fifth annual DFRWS APAC 2025 conference will be held Monday, November 10 through Wednesday, November 12, as a hybrid event in Seoul, South Korea, which runs concurrently with attendees participating in satellite sites within APAC.

We invite original contributions in the form of research papers, non-research presentations, demos, and posters in topic areas related to digital evidence and digital forensics.

DFRWS welcomes new perspectives that push the envelope of what is currently possible in digital forensics. Potential topics (alphabetical) to be addressed by submissions include, but are not limited to:

Anti-forensics and anti-anti-forensics
Artificial intelligence-assisted digital forensics
Case studies and trend reports
Copyright infringement response
Cryptocurrency investigation
Data decoding, deserialization and decryption
Deleted/Damaged data recovery methods and tools
Development of digital forensic infrastructures
Digital evidence sharing and exchange
Digital forensic preparedness / readiness
Digital forensic tool validation
Digital forensics in smart cities
Digital investigation case management
Event reconstruction methods and tools
Forensic analysis of anonymous network based activities
Forensic analysis of cloud and virtualized environments
Forensic analysis of cloud-based services
Forensic analysis of databases
Forensic exploration of newly emerging devices, OSes, apps and services
Incident response on malware and targeted attacks
Laws and policies for digital evidence
Large language models for digital forensics
Machine learning and data mining for digital forensics
Memory acquisition and analysis
Methodological frameworks for digital forensic activities
Mobile and embedded device forensics
Multimedia (image, audio, video) data analysis
Multi-source data integration and correlation analysis
Network and distributed system forensics
Non-traditional forensic scenarios / contexts
Privacy-preserving forensics
Special-purpose embedded systems (e.g., vehicles, industrial control systems, medical devices)
Steganography and steganalysis
Training and upskilling
Visualization methods and tools for forensic analysis

Click Here For Proposal Requirements

Deadlines

Date	Event
May 23, 2025 (extended)	Full research papers: Submissions due - no further extensions
July 7, 2025	Full research papers: Notification to authors
July 28, 2025	Full research papers: Shepherding/revision author notification
July 28, 2025	Full research papers: Camera ready paper submissions due
rolling basis	Workshops, Presentations, Demos, Posters (Rolling notification until the program is full)

Committees

Organizing Committee

Conference Chair

Jungheum Park (Korea University)

Emeritus Chair

Bradley Schatz (Apple)

Technical Program Chair

Asanka Sayakkara (University of Colombo)

Technical Program Vice Chair

Priyanka Singh (University of Queensland)

Technical Program Emeritus Chair

John Sheppard (South East Technological University)

Proceeding Chair

Mariya Shafat (University of Kashmir)

Proceeding Vice Chair

Gaurav Gogia (Qualys)

Practitioner Talk Chair

Raymond Chan (Singapore Institute of Technology)

Demo and Poster Chair

Allan Korol (CrowdStrike)

Workshop Co-Chair

Jihun Joun (Arizona State University)

Workshop Co-Chair

Akash Thakar (Rashtriya Raksha University)

Rodeo Chair

Doowon Jeong (Sungkyunkwan University)

Rodeo Vice-Chair

Philgeun Jin (Sungkyunkwan University)

Web Chair

Luke Jennings (Flinders University)

Web Vice Chair

Woosung Yun (Korea University)

Social Media Co-Chair

Bhargav Rathod (Palo Alto Networks)

Social Media Co-Chair

Jinkook Kim (PLAINBIT)

Hybrid Co-Chair

Akash Thakar (Rashtriya Raksha University)

Scheduling Chair

Luke Jennings (Flinders University)

Sponsorship Co-Chair

Daryl Pfeif (Digital Forensics Solutions)

Sponsorship Co-Chair

Zoran Iliev (CBIT)

Chief Organizational Officer

Daryl Pfeif (Digital Forensics Solutions)

Secretary

Frank Adelstein (Hexordia)

Industry Outreach Chair

Joseph Florendo (TikTok Singapore)

Technical Program Committee

Felix Freiling

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)

Irfan Ahmed

Virginia Commonwealth University

Frank Adelstein

NFA Digital, LLC

Harald Baier

Universität der Bundeswehr München, Research Instiute CODE

Jewan Bang

Hansei University

Frank Breitinger

University of Augsburg

Javier Carrillo-Mondéjar

Universidad de Zaragoza

Milan Cermak

Institute of Computer Science, Masaryk University

Ching Bon Raymond Chan

Singapore Institute of Technology

K P Chow

The University of Hong Kong

Patrick De Smet

Nationaal Instituut voor Criminalistiek en Criminologie (NICC/INCC)

Zeno Geradts

Netherlands Forensic Institute

Stefano Gogioso

University of Oxford

Weihan Goh

Singapore Institute of Technology

Chris Hargreaves

HARGS Solutions Ltd

Jan-Niclas Hilgert

Fraunhofer

Luke Jennings

Flinders University

Jihun Joun

Arizona State Univeristy

Dohyun Kim

National Korea Maritime & Ocean University

Mariya Kirmani

University of Kashmir

Rakesh Singh Kunwar

Rashtriya Raksha University

Kwok Yan Lam

Nanyang Technological University

Changhoon Lee

Seoul National University of Science and Technology

Christian Lindenmeier

Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg

Jimmy McGibney

South East Technological University

Sean Mckeown

Edinburgh Napier University

Atefeh Mohseni Ejiyeh

University of California, Santa Barbara

Robert Jan Mora

Volexity

Lojenaa Navanesan

University of Vavuniya

Rune Nordvik

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Jungheum Park

Korea University

Judson Powers

Google

Bhargav Rathod

Palo Alto Networks

Ricardo J. Rodríguez

Universidad de Zaragoza

Jens-Petter Sandvik

National Criminal Investigation Service, Norway

Asanka Sayakkara

University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC)

Ruud Schramp

Netherlands Forensic Institute

Taeshik Shon

Ajou University

Hudan Studiawan

Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember

Akash Thakar

Rashtriya Raksha University

Wietse Venema

Google

Min Yu

Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Richard E Overill

King's College London

Leslie Sikos

Edith Cowan University

Registration

Registration is open! The Early bird rate will be in effect until September 19, 2025 (extended). You must apply the discount code EarlyBird25 in your registration process.

Group registration discounts are available for registrations of more than 5 attendees at once. Please reach out to apac-registration (at) dfrws (dot) org to request a voucher code.

In Person Conference Prices

Type of Registration	Early Bird Rate	Regular Rate	Last Chance Rate
Available through...	September 19, 2025	October 24, 2025
Standard (Speaker)	USD 695	USD 795	USD 895 (last-minute)
Law Enforcement	USD 595	USD 695	USD 795 (last-minute)
Student	USD 495	USD 595	USD 695 (last-minute)

Virtual Conference Prices

Type of Registration	Triple - All 3 Conferences	Double - Any 2 Conferences	Single - Just DFRWS APAC 2025
Standard	-	-	USD 150