Topics of Interest

The Doctoral Symposium is open to fresh insights that challenge the current boundaries of digital forensics. The submissions can cover a broad range of topics related to digital forensics, including, but not limited to:

• Anti-forensics and anti-anti-forensics
• AI-assisted digital forensics
• Case studies and trend reports
• Cloud and virtualized environment forensics
• Covert channels (e.g., TOR, VPN)
• Cryptocurrency investigation
• Development of digital forensic infrastructures
• Digital evidence sharing and exchange
• Digital evidence and the law
• Digital forensic analysis of AI models
• Digital forensic preparedness / readiness
• Digital investigation case management
• Digital forensic tool validation
• Digital forensic triage / survey
• Event reconstruction methods and tools
• Forensics analysis and visualization of Big Data
• Forensic analysis of anonymous networks
• Forensic analysis of databases
• Implanted medical devices
• Incident response on malware and targeted attacks
• Machine learning and data mining for digital evidence extraction/query
• Memory acquisition and analysis
• Methodology for digital forensic processes
• Mobile and embedded device forensics
• Multimedia (image, audio, video) data analysis
• Network and distributed system forensics
• Non-traditional forensic scenarios / contexts
• SCADA / industrial control systems
• Smart power grid forensics
• Steganography and steganalysis
• Smart building forensics
• Vehicle forensics (e.g., drones, cars)
• Visualization methods and tools for forensic analysis

Submission Information

The Doctoral Symposium invites contributions in the form of Short Research Papers. They must be original contributions, must not be under simultaneous publication review elsewhere, the lead author must be a student, and must align with the topics of interest of the symposium. Survey/literature review papers are not suitable for publication at DFDS. The proceedings of DFDS will be published open access in the ACM International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS).

Papers must be written in English, blinded, and must not exceed 6 single-spaced, two-column pages with 1in margins and 10pt font. This page limit does NOT include references and appendices, although references and appendices should be limited to one page each to the most extent possible (max 8 pages in total). Papers must be submitted as PDF files. Higher resolution graphics are required (vector graphics or >300 DPI). In case of acceptance, papers must be formatted to conform with the publisher’s style guidelines. 

All submissions undergo an initial screening by the TPC Chair(s) ensuring relevance to the event and compliance with the submission criteria. Once approved, submissions will undergo a “double-blind” review process, therefore, the version submitted for review must not contain the names or affiliations of the authors and should anonymise content that readily identifies them. Please note that the Doctoral Symposium submissions will undergo a separate review process compared to the full papers of the main DFRWS EU conference. 

At least one full DFRWS EU registration per paper is required before submitting the camera-ready version, i.e., before the camera-ready submission deadline. Authors MUST present their work in person at the symposium.

All contributions must be submitted to the Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium track through the EasyChair site at https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=dfrwseu2025 

For questions related to the doctoral symposium, please send an email to: katerina (at) dfrws (dot) org

Committees

Organizing Committee

Technical Program Committee