0x03 Call for papers
The talk you keep meaning to write up.
Security BSides Dehradun 0x03 wants talks and workshops from people who build, break and defend things, and it wants them from you specifically, not from whoever the conference circuit has already booked. First-time speakers are genuinely welcome.
The window opens in 36 days and stays open for about 12 weeks. Nothing to do today except decide what you want to talk about.
0 days left to submit. Everything arriving before the end of 25 December 2026 gets read.
The window has closed for 0x03. Everyone who submitted hears back by 14 February 2027.
- Platform
- cfp.directory
- Questions
- cfp@bsidesdehradun.com
01 Timeline
Four dates, and only one of them needs you.
The whole cycle, start to stage. The highlighted step is worked out from today's date.
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1 October 2026
Submissions open
The form goes live on cfp.directory. Early submissions are not scored higher, but they do get read while we are still fresh.
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25 December 2026
Submissions close
At the end of the day, IST. After this the queue is frozen and review starts.
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10 to 14 February 2027
Everyone hears back
Accepted or not, you get an answer inside that window, and nobody waits past the end of it.
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3–4 April 2027
You are on stage
The main track runs on day two, Sunday 4 April, at UPES Bidholi Campus, Dehradun, in front of 400+ people.
02 What we want
There are no fixed tracks. Submit the talk you want to give.
Named tracks mostly teach speakers to bend a good idea into the nearest box, so there are none. Below is how we will actually read your proposal.
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Work you actually did
A thing you built, broke, reverse-engineered, deployed or had to clean up afterwards. First-hand beats a well-organised summary of other people's research every single time.
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Findings, failures and fixes
A vulnerability and how you found it. An incident and what it cost. A control that did not work and why. The failures are usually the better talk and are almost always the braver one.
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Defence, not only offence
Detection engineering, incident response, hardening, threat modelling, appsec that shipped. Offensive work fills conference schedules; defensive work fills the rest of the year.
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Something with a local edge
Systems, regulation, fraud patterns and infrastructure specific to India and the region. This audience can use that on Monday morning, and almost nobody else is presenting it.
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Tools, if we can watch them run
Tool talks are welcome when there is a live demo and the code is public. A tool talk with neither is a product pitch wearing a lanyard.
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Depth a beginner can follow
The room holds second-year students and principal engineers at the same time. The best talks here respect both. They start from first principles and still go somewhere new.
- Tracks
- None Deliberately. Your proposal is read on its own terms.
- Formats
- Three Talk, workshop or lightning talk, set out below.
- Language
- English, primarily If you would rather present in Hindi, say so in the submission and we will talk about it.
- Attendance
- In person We have not decided whether to take remote talks. Ask before you assume either way.
Nothing on this list is a filter. It is what we find ourselves saying yes to. If your idea fits none of it and you still think it belongs on this stage, submit it and tell us why.
Topic tags
The submission form carries 28 topic tags, so that a search for a subject finds this call at all. They are tags, not tracks: pick the closest one, pick several, or pick none.
- Offensive security
- Red team
- Penetration testing
- Blue team
- Application security
- DevSecOps
- Cloud security
- IoT security
- API security
- GraphQL security
- Mobile security
- Network security
- Hardware hacking
- Reverse engineering
- Malware analysis
- Threat intelligence
- Incident response
- Digital forensics
- Cryptography
- Bug bounty
- Vulnerability research
- AI security
- OSINT
- Insider threat detection
- Web application security
- Blockchain security
- Supply chain attacks
- Deepfakes
03 Formats
Three shapes. Take the one the material needs.
The submission form asks you to choose a format and a duration, so here are both before you get there. Propose against these lengths.
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45 min
Talk
A full-length technical talk, questions included. The main track on day two, Sunday 4 April, is built out of these.
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150 min
Workshop
Two and a half hours, hands on. Everybody brings a laptop and leaves having done the thing. Workshops run on day one.
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15 min
Lightning talk
One sharp idea and no padding. The shortest way onto a stage, and a good first one.
A duration is a budget, not a target. Fifteen honest minutes beat forty-five padded ones, and a reviewer can tell which one a proposal is asking for. If your material sits between two of these, say which way you would rather go.
- Chosen in
- The submission form Format and duration are both fields on it.
- Timetable slot
- Not final Built from the accepted talks against the venue schedule. If a slot ends up shorter or longer than the format you proposed, we ask you first.
04 The submission
Six things to put in it.
None of this needs to be polished. A rough proposal that tells us what you found is worth more to a reviewer than a beautiful one that does not.
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A title that says what it is
Save the pun for the second line. A reviewer reading the fortieth proposal of the evening should know your subject from the title alone.
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An abstract
Two or three paragraphs is plenty. What the problem was, what you did, what happened. No word count to hit.
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What is new about it
One line. Even "nobody has written this up in a way a beginner can follow" is a good answer.
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What the room walks away with
A technique, a tool, a way of thinking, a warning. Something they still have on the train home.
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Where you have given it before
If anywhere. Previously-presented material is not disqualified. We would simply like to know, and a link to a recording helps us more than it hurts you.
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Whether this is your first talk
Say so. It changes how we read the proposal, in your favour.
Not required
Things you can leave out
- A bio over three lines
- A photograph
- A company affiliation
- A slide deck
- Your certifications
We will never ask for a deck before a decision. We are reading the idea, not the CV attached to it.
Every submission is read by all 5 reviewers against five weighted criteria. Who they are, and the conflict-of-interest rule, are on the review board page.
05 Workshops
Or bring something people can do with their hands.
Workshops go through the same call as talks. Submit one the same way and mark it clearly as hands-on.
A workshop is harder to run than a talk and worth more to the people who sit through it. If you have taught something before, internally, at a college, in a Discord call, that counts as experience, and we would like to hear about it.
- Submit via
- The same call as talks Mark the submission as a workshop so it is reviewed as one.
- Duration
- 150 min The length the submission form asks a workshop to fit.
- Room capacity
- TBA This and the equipment follow the venue schedule.
- Equipment
- TBA Assume participants bring their own laptops. Tell us anything beyond that and we will confirm what is possible.
- Talk to us
- cfp@bsidesdehradun.com
06 First-time speakers
This is the part of the page we care most about.
We would rather read a rough idea from someone who has never spoken than a polished one that has already been given at three other conferences.
The organising team
BSides exists because the main-stage conferences could not fit everyone who had something worth saying. Every edition of this one has put people on stage for the first time, and that is the part of the job the team likes best.
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Say it is your first time
There is no penalty. It tells us to read for the idea rather than the packaging.
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Write to us before you submit
If you have a subject but not a shape, email cfp@bsidesdehradun.com and describe it in a paragraph. Someone on the team will write back and help you turn it into a proposal.
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You do not need to be an expert
You need to have done the thing and be able to explain it. Those are different qualifications, and only the second one is scarce.
07 What you get
Nobody is paid. Here is everything else.
Speaking at BSides is unpaid, ours included. What we can offer, we offer to every accepted speaker on the same terms.
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A stage and an audience for it
A room planned for 400+ at UPES Bidholi Campus, Dehradun, and people in it who came to hear the technical version rather than the keynote version.
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A free pass to both days
Accepted speakers do not buy a ticket, and the pass covers 3–4 April 2027 in full, not only the day you are on.
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Food, coffee and somewhere to sit down
Speaker hospitality across both days. Lunch and refreshments are on us, and there is a room to work in before you go on rather than a corridor.
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A seat at the speaker dinner
Every accepted speaker is invited. It is the evening where the reviewers, the organisers and the other speakers end up in the same conversation.
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A discount code in your name
A code of your own for your team, your students or whoever has been hearing about this work from you already. They get a cheaper ticket.
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Help getting the talk ready
If it is your first, someone on the team works through the structure and a practice run with you before the day. That offer is set out above.
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An answer either way
Accepted or not, you hear from us by 14 February 2027, and a rejection comes with what the board thought rather than a form letter.
- Fee
- None No speaker at any BSides is paid to speak, and neither is anyone organising it.
- Travel and stay
- TBA Nothing promised yet. Tell us in the submission if cost is what decides whether you can come.
- Recording
- TBA Not decided for 0x03. Nothing is published without the speaker agreeing to it.
This is the whole offer. If something you need is not on it, ask before you submit rather than after you are accepted, at cfp@bsidesdehradun.com.
08 How to submit
One route in.
Submissions
Opens 1 October 2026
The form is not up yet. Put the date somewhere you will see it, or ask us to remind you.
Closed for 0x03
Everyone who submitted hears back by 14 February 2027. The next call opens with the next edition.
On the link: the direct link to the 0x03 form does not exist until the call opens, so the button above points at cfp.directory itself for now and will be updated in place.
- Opens
- Closes
- End of day, IST.
- Decisions
- Decisions go out across 10 to 14 February 2027.
- Reviewed by
- A review board of five Volunteers. Nobody is paid, on either side of the review.
- Formats
- Three to choose from Talk 45 min, workshop 150 min, lightning talk 15 min.
- Timetable slot
- Not final Set once the venue schedule is fixed.
- What you get
- A pass, hospitality and the dinner No fee. The whole offer, including the two parts still open, is one section up.
09 Questions
The ones speakers actually ask.
Answered honestly, including the ones we cannot answer yet
Can I submit more than one idea?
Yes. Send each one as its own submission so they can be read independently. If both are accepted we will talk to you about which fits the schedule.
Do you pay speakers?
No. Security BSides Dehradun is volunteer-run and nobody involved is paid, including the organising team. We would rather tell you that in a FAQ than let you find out after you have been accepted.
A free pass to both days, hospitality, the speaker dinner and a discount code in your name are what we offer instead. The whole list is above, including the two parts of it we cannot answer yet.
Will you cover travel or accommodation?
We cannot promise anything yet. The event is funded by sponsorship and the 0x03 budget is not settled, so any answer today would be a guess.
What we can do is be useful about it: if cost is the thing stopping you from submitting, write to cfp@bsidesdehradun.com and say so early. Knowing who needs help is what lets us try to arrange any.
Are talks recorded and published?
Not decided for 0x03. We will confirm before the submission window closes so nobody has to commit blind.
Independent of that decision: no recording of your talk gets published without your agreement, and choosing not to be recorded will never affect whether a talk is accepted.
Can I talk about my company's product?
Not as the subject of the talk. Technical work that came out of building a product is very welcome; a walkthrough of the product is a sponsor conversation, and that door is genuinely open. It is just a different door.
The test we apply: would this talk still be useful to someone who will never buy the thing?
How long is a talk?
A talk is 45 min and a lightning talk is 15 min. A workshop is longer again, and all three are set out above. You pick one on the form.
What is not fixed is where that lands in the timetable, because the timetable is built from the accepted talks against a venue schedule that is not final. If a slot ends up a different length from the format you proposed, we ask you before anything is published.
Can I present remotely?
0x03 is planned as an in-person event and we have not decided whether to accept remote talks. If travelling to Dehradun is not possible for you, say so in the submission or write to us first. We would rather have the conversation than lose the talk by default.
I am not sure it is good enough.
That feeling is not information. It correlates with caring about the subject, which is the one thing we cannot teach a speaker.
Submit it. The worst outcome is a no from a group of volunteers who will have read it carefully and told you why, which is more feedback than most ideas ever get. If it helps to know who is reading, the review board is a named page, not a black box.
What if I miss the deadline?
The window closes at the end of 25 December 2026, IST, and the queue is frozen so review can start on time. Write to cfp@bsidesdehradun.com anyway. We cannot promise to read a late submission, but we can promise to read the email.
Before you submit
Everyone who speaks, attends, sponsors or volunteers agrees to the code of conduct.
It is short, it is enforced, and it is the reason people bring students and first-time speakers to this conference. Read it before you send us anything.