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IEEE Security & Privacy
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Call for Papers: Special Issue on Security and Privacy Issues of Home Globalization

In recent years, people have been reshaping their homes into smart homes by using a wide array of home-based Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including inter-connected lights, locks, sensors, actuators, wearables, and appliances accessible through the Internet and controlled locally (e.g., via voice) or remotely (e.g., via mobile phone). These smart home devices are complemented by laptops, mobile phones, game consoles, electronical health equipment, and many other consumer IoT nodes, which are constantly used at home for work, pleasure, health, and entertainment, just to mention the most common purposes. The emerging pervasiveness of IoT technologies is transforming homes into globalized homes in which devices supporting everyday activities can be accessed from anywhere. Although home globalization has its benefits, it also covertly renders homes more insecure and less private places where individuals are exposed to more and more varying threats from the outside world.

Despite the benefits, home globalization and the used technologies have led to many security threats and privacy breaches. In fact, home-based IoT technologies at the basis of globalized homes are becoming prone to abuses including adaptations of well-known cyber-attacks leveraging the variety of data and devices populating modern apartments and houses. In addition, both home-based and consumer IoT frameworks collect and manage information that is tightly coupled with the everyday life of individuals and can thus be considered a source of sensitive data that is of interest for profiling or reconnaissance attempts. Therefore, the resulting home globalization requires us to face new threats and risks leading to different challenges. In fact, modern homes are technologically balkanized with services provided via different technologies (IEEE 802.15.4, home/consumer IoT, voice-based assistants) and by multiple vendors (device and software) often by using a cloud- or fog-based scheme. Additional challenges stem from the relatively covert introduction of new risks during home globalization, as people tend to put more focus on functionalities of new smart devices than the security and privacy implications of their use. In this perspective, enforcing security and privacy in such a scenario requires rethinking and developing new defenses and solutions, as well as addressing new social challenges for law enforcement agencies, policy makers, and forensics professionals.

This special issue aims at collecting the most relevant ongoing research efforts in the security and privacy field concerning home globalization. Topics include, but are not limited to:

- Security management of home-based and consumer IoT
- Network security of globalized homes
- Adoption of cybersecurity measures in globalized homes, including child safety
- Surveillance, interception, blocking, and sovereignty in home-based IoT environments
- De-anonymization, AI-based social inference, integrity, and privacy leaks
- Stealth communication, information hiding threats, and their detection in home-based IoT environments
- Cybercrime investigation, law, jurisdiction, and ethics in home-based IoT environments

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Important Dates

Submissions due: 31 May 2021
First review complete: 30 June 2021
Acceptance notification: 25 September 2021
Camera-ready version: 15 October 2021
Publication: January/February 2022
Submission Guidelines
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Original and high-quality contributions that have not yet been published and are not currently under review by other journals or peer-reviewed conferences are sought. The submitted papers should be formatted according to the journal style. For more detailed information concerning the requirements for submission, please refer to the journal’s Author Information webpage:

https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/sp/write-for-us/14680?title=Author%20Information&periodical=IEEE%20Security%20%26%20Privacy

All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted through the online submission system. During the submission process, authors should select the special-issue option “Security and Privacy Issues of Home Globalization.” All papers will be rigorously reviewed based on their originality, high scientific quality, organization, clarity of writing, conclusions, and relevance to this special issue. The manuscripts will be accepted or rejected in line with the usual standards of the journal.
Guest Editors

Contact the guest editors at sp1-22@computer.org.

- Luca Caviglione, IMATI, National Research Council of Italy, Italy
- Steffen Wendzel, Worms University of Applied Sciences & Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany
- Simon Vrhovec, University of Maribor, Slovenia
- Aleksandra Mileva, University Goce Delcev, Republic of N. Macedonia