CCS Reproducibility

Use this before submission and again before the artifact-evaluation deadline. Reopen the current CFP and call for artifacts to confirm what availability statement and packaging CCS expects this cycle.

Evidence map

• Map each security claim — every attack, defense guarantee, and measurement result — to a verifiable location: a script, a config, a dataset, a proof, or a logged run.
• For attacks, record the target's exact version and configuration, the attacker's resource budget, and the sequence of steps that reproduce the exploit.
• For defenses, record the workload, the overhead-measurement method, the hardware, and the adaptive attacker used, so the cost-versus-security tradeoff can be rechecked.
• For measurements, document the vantage point, the collection window, the sampling frame, known blind spots, and the ground-truth validation.
• When artifacts cannot be shared — licensing, responsible disclosure, subject safety, or premature-release risk — say so explicitly and offer partial, synthetic, or redacted artifacts that still let a reader assess the methodology.

Availability-posture table

Claim type	What full sharing looks like	Honest fallback when sharing is blocked
Exploit against deployed software	Runnable PoC plus target build	Redacted PoC, disclosed-and-patched note, synthetic target
Defense with overhead numbers	Instrumented build and benchmark scripts	Binaries plus measurement scripts if source is proprietary
Internet-scale measurement	Dataset plus collection tooling	Aggregated data with subject-privacy justification for the rest
Cryptographic protocol	Reference implementation and test vectors	Spec plus test vectors if the implementation is embargoed

Claiming an artifact is unavailable without a reason CCS accepts (a license, a disclosure embargo, subject safety) reads as evasion; state the specific reason and offer the closest shareable substitute.

Vignette: a measurement paper on vulnerable hosts

Consider a study scanning the Internet for a misconfiguration. Its reproducibility spine: the scan methodology and rate-limiting, the classification rule for "vulnerable," the ground-truth sample validated by hand, the ethics of scanning and notification, and an aggregated dataset that preserves the finding without exposing individual vulnerable hosts to opportunistic attackers.

Degrees of reproducibility

• Turnkey: one command reproduces the attack or the overhead measurement from pinned configs.
• Scripted: scripts exist but need documented manual steps or gated data access.
• Descriptive: prose detailed enough that a competent security researcher could rebuild it.

For CCS, aim turnkey for anything you submit to artifact evaluation, and state the achieved level honestly rather than overpromising a one-command reproduction that fails on a clean host.

Output format

[Claim inventory] <claim -> evidence location>
[Availability posture] full / partial / justified-withheld
[Reproducibility gaps] <versions / configs / budgets / provenance / ethics>
[Paper fixes] <must appear in main PDF or appendix>
[Artifact fixes] <packaging additions before the AE deadline>