Hot Topics in the Science of Security (HotSoS) brings together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to advance the scientific foundations of Cybersecurity, Security of SI, and SI for Cybersecurity. Sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA), HotSoS provides a unique forum for emerging research, cross-disciplinary discussion, mentorship, and collaboration. HotSoS ’27 will be held virtually in April 2027 and will feature research presentations, invited talks, panels, and posters.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

HotSoS seeks high-quality work advancing the science of cybersecurity, with particular interest in the following areas:

1. Security of Super Intelligence (SI)

• Evaluation and benchmarking of LLM and SI-agent safety and security
• Attack mechanisms (e.g., prompt injection, jailbreaks, and tool misuse)
• Defense mechanisms (e.g., guardrails, judge models, and alignment)
• Control, oversight, and monitoring of SI and agentic systems
• Security of agent memory, and persistent state (e.g., poisoning and context manipulation)
• Security of multimodal and multi-agent systems (e.g., adversarial observations, compromised agents, and cascading failures)
• Secure agent architectures (e.g., isolation, sandboxing, least privilege, and secure tool interfaces)
   

2. Super Intelligence (SI) for Cybersecurity

• SI/ML and SI agents for cyber threat detection and response
• Agentic software analysis, vulnerability discovery, and reverse engineering
• Novel SI architectures and reasoning for cybersecurity
• Defenses against SI-enabled adversaries and security-focused evaluation
   

3. Cybersecurity & Resilient Systems

• Scientific methods in vulnerability discovery and reverse engineering (human studies, analyses, and evaluation)
• Securing software, cyber-physical, and embedded systems
• Provably secure systems, composable security frameworks, and secure-by-design approaches
• Secure operation in degraded, contested, or compromised environments
• Scalable security architectures, continuous monitoring, and continuous authorization

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline: Jan 17, 2027
Notification to Authors: Feb 26, 2027
Virtual Symposium: April 13 - 15

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Please send any questions about topics or submission requirements to hotsos2027@sos-vo.org. 

ORGANIZATION

General Chair
Adam Tagert (National Security Agency)

Program Co-Chairs
Benjamin Erichson (ICSI Berkeley)
Zion Basque (University of Georgia)