The DFRWS digital forensics conference brings together leading researchers, developers, practitioners, and educators interested in advancing the state of the art in digital forensics from around the world. As the most established forum in the field, DFRWS is the preferred place to present both cutting-edge research and perspectives on best practices for all aspects of digital forensics. As an independent organization, we promote open community discussions and disseminate the results of our work to the widest audience.

We invite original contributions as research papers, panel proposals, work-in-progress talks, workshop proposals, and demo proposals. All papers are evaluated through a double-blind, peer-review process, and those accepted will be published in printed proceedings by Elsevier.

The 12th Annual DFRWS Conference is held in cooperation with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and its Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC). The conference will be held in Washington, DC from August 6 to 8, 2012.

Topics of Interest

* Memory analysis
* Filesystem forensics
* Incident response and live analysis
* Network-based forensics
* Traffic analysis, traceback and attribution
* Event reconstruction methods and tools
* Application analysis
* Embedded and mobile device forensics
* Large-scale investigations
* Digital evidence storage and preservation
* Data mining
* Data hiding and discovery
* Data recovery and reconstruction
* Multimedia analysis
* Database forensics
* Tool testing and development
* Digital evidence and the law
* Anti-forensics and anti-anti-forensics
* Case studies and trend reports
* Malware forensics
* Data visualization in forensic analysis
* Forensics in distributed and virtual environments
* Interpersonal communications and social network analysis
* Non-traditional approaches to forensic analysis

The above list is only suggestive. We welcome new, original ideas from people in academia, industry, government, and law enforcement who are interested in sharing their results, knowledge, and experience. Authors are encouraged to demonstrate the applicability of their work to practical issues. Questions about submission topics can be sent via email to: dfrws2012-papers (at) dfrws (dot) org

Publication Criteria

Research papers must be original contributions, not duplicate previous work (including the authors' own), and must not be under simultaneous publication review elsewhere. The review process will be "double-blind" (the reviewers will not know who the authors are, and the authors will not know who the reviewers are). Therefore, the version submitted for review should not contain the names or affiliations of the authors. When referring to their own previous work, authors should use the third person instead of the first person (i.e. "Smith and Jones [2] previously determined..." instead of "We [2] previously determined..").

Papers must be written in English and should not exceed 10 single-spaced, two- column pages with 1 inch margins and 10pt font. Authors will be given 30 minutes to present their paper.

Panel proposals should be one to three pages and clearly describe the topic, its relevance and a list of potential panelists and their biographies. Panels will be evaluated based on the topic relevance and diversity of the panelists.

Proposals for workshops should be one to three pages and describe the topic, the intended audience, what materials will be provided to participants, and any hardware and software requirements.

Proposals for demonstrations of proof of concept and research-based tools are also welcome. Proposals should describe the tool, its relevance to the forensics field and space/equipment needs (e.g., power, networking, etc.).
Authors are expected to present their work in person at the conference. At least one registration per paper is required in order to be included in the proceedings. Authors shall register for the conference prior to submitting their final draft for publication.

Submissions

Paper submissions must be made through EasyChair located online at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dfrws2012 in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Accepted papers will be required to be resubmitted to the publisher in editable source format (Microsoft Word, Latex, or plain text) for final print formatting.

Panel submissions must be e-mailed to dfrws2012-papers (at) dfrws (dot) org in PDF or plain text format.
Poster and demo submissions must be emailed to dfrws2012-demos (at) dfrws (dot) org in PDF or plain text format.

Proposals for pre-conference workshops must be emailed to dfrws2012-papers (at) dfrws (dot) org in PDF or plain text format.

Student Scholarship Program

A limited number of scholarships may be awarded to students presenting a paper at the conference. The intent is to help alleviate the financial burden due to the cost of hotel expenses and conference registration. See the DFRWS homepage for more information.