Welcome to BSides Zürich 2021: Stay Home edition!

Since 2021 will be the second consecutive year without a BSides Zurich security conference and we have moved out of the 2020 “is this thing for real?” stage to the 2021 “hopefully this is the last year of this” stage, we want to do something a little special. We are excited to announce that BSides Zurich is coming to you this year in the form of a limited edition printed book!

The book will be structured in four different sections, and you can contribute to all of them:

Personal Research – our classic CfP
Historical and Influential research
Swiss Conferences “Hall of Fame”
Art

If you are interested in seeing your work in print, read the details below. The Call for Submissions will be open until Friday 15th October 23:59 Zurich time (UTC+2).

Section 1: Personal Research – Our classic CfP

This section’s content will reflect our standard CfP, written pieces about stuff you have been working on and would like to share with our community; (can also include blog posts!).

The submissions do not necessarily have to be about brand new attack/defense techniques or the latest and greatest innovative research, but they can also be about problems that affect most of us in this industry in our daily work describing interesting ways to address them.

As usual, all infosec topics are welcome!

Section 2: Historical and Influential research

Steering away from the classic bleeding-edge research call for papers we do each year, we want this book to have readers take pause and reflect on information security in general. What has stayed the same? What has changed? What are things that haven’t changed, but should? We would like to take the temperature of our industry, and this is how you can contribute:

Submit any piece of research, recent or not, that you have found foundational to infosec as it is today. It could be a conference paper, blog posts, article, etc.
To be clear, this does not necessarily have to be something you wrote, but something that represents a community or industry milestone and you found it to be significant and influential in your work/career;
Ideally, we would like to highlight the evolution of these important topics. You are welcome to submit two entries, one “before” and one “now”. E.g. “smashing the stack” and “a ROP primer”.

Section 3: Swiss Conferences “Hall of Fame”

BSides Zurich is a young conference, and Switzerland has a great tradition of conferences with some really good work being presented over the years.

We want to pay tribute to those conferences that have led the Swiss way 🙂 and inspired us, and have a collection of some of the best presentations you have attended or read about from any Swiss Security Conference, at any time.

Section 4: Art

Our work requires creativity, and we are used to applying it to our code, design solutions, attacks, etc., but creativity can be expressed in many different ways.

We would like to dedicate a section to Artistic contributions and encourage you to submit any of your original work in the form of drawings, comics, logos, photographs.

The only “rule” is about the Theme: it should be somehow related to either infosec, BSides, or Zurich/Switzerland.

Unleash your creativity!!!

Submissions guidelines and deadlines

As with previous years, personal research submissions will be reviewed by our Program Committee. Content submitted to the “Historical and Influential research” category will be selected by community vote.

Submissions for papers, blog posts, and influential articles should be between 2 to 5 pages (including all graphics) and there’s no minimum page size for drawings, comics, logos, and photography.

If you are interested in seeing your work in print, follow the Call for Submissions application form link and apply. The Call for Submissions will be open until Thursday 30th September 23:59 Zurich time (UTC+2).
Apply HERE: https://forms.gle/Tm6KrDB6eUeB8xe29

Needless to say, all authors that will have their contribution accepted will receive a copy of the book delivered free of charge.

If you have any doubt or questions about the Call for Submissions, please reach out to us via email (bsideszh [at] gmail [dot] com) or Twitter @BSidesZurich.