3rd Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions (eBPF)

eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is an innovative technology that has been gaining popularity in the networking and operating system community for its flexibility, safety, and efficiency in programming end-host network and OS stacks. Despite the numerous advantages of eBPF, there are several research challenges in leveraging it for novel use cases. These challenges include the difficulty in integrating eBPF into current systems, the potential performance overhead when executed in the kernel, limitations of existing programming hooks and APIs, and the programming restrictions and challenges imposed by the need for safety as enforced by the eBPF verifier. To tackle these issues, a cross-disciplinary approach is necessary, combining techniques across network protocol design, programming languages, operating systems, compilers, hardware architecture, and formal verification.

The workshop aims to bring together experts and practitioners in the field of eBPF, end-host networking, and operating systems to discuss and present the latest advances to support and apply this cutting edge technology. Submissions may show the benefits that eBPF can bring to real-world systems, explore mechanisms to improve or re-design existing eBPF mechanisms, examine the security implications of end-host programmability, or present measurement studies that reveal new and interesting directions for this ecosystem. We are looking for novel and previously unpublished ideas, systems, and measurements that address key issues and challenges in this growing area, position papers that outline directions for the research community, as well as preliminary papers from ongoing projects that could benefit from early community feedback.

We welcome submissions including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• eBPF program development and deployment
• Better approaches to eBPF program safety verification
• eBPF in network performance analysis and optimization
• eBPF in security and threat management
• Previously unexplored, under-explored, and emerging use cases of eBPF
• Techniques to optimize eBPF programs, for example, static or dynamic optimizations
• eBPF-based approaches for improving application efficiency
• Interaction between eBPF and end-host networking
• eBPF use cases in high-performance networking
• eBPF-based approaches to CPU scheduling
• Security implications and innovations for end-host programmability using eBPF
• Usage of hardware security or performance features to benefit eBPF
• Approaches to improving the in-kernel JIT compiler for eBPF
• Quantitative measurements or comparisons of eBPF to other programmable data plane technologies
• Approaches to scaling eBPF programs in large-scale distributed systems
• Case studies and real-world deployments of eBPF and end-host networking
• Future directions and challenges in eBPF and end-host networking
• Techniques for software or hardware fault isolation in eBPF or related systems
• eBPF for secure and efficient execution of smart contracts in blockchain environments

The 3rd workshop on eBPF and kernel extensions solicits submissions. We are looking for two-types of submissions:

1. Research papers of up to 6 pages, including all figures, tables and appendices. Submissions must be original, unpublished work, that have not been concurrently submitted to other venues. Workshop papers will appear in ACM DL as a part of the official proceedings, and are thus considered published work.
2. Extended abstracts, which are 2 pages in length (excluded references) submitted in the same format as the workshop papers. We‘re particularly interested in early-stage findings, position papers and works that are still in progress. This segment is designed for authors to showcase their preliminary or emerging ideas in a concise, impactful manner, and get early-stage feedback at the workshop. As such, these authors will be given the opportunity to present their work in the form of a lighting talk during the workshop.

Both types of papers can use as many additional pages as necessary for citations, and should be written using the two-column 10pt ACM SIGCOMM format. All submissions are double-blind. The program committee will review papers to determine relevance to the workshop, quality, and on the likelihood that it will elicit discussion among the attendees. At least one author from each accepted submission must attend the workshop to present and discuss their work.

Please submit your paper via https://ebpf25.hotcrp.com/

Submission deadline	May 8th, 2025
Acceptance Notification	June 13th, 2025
Camera-ready Deadline	July 2nd, 2025
Workshop Date	(To be announced)

General & Steering Committee Co-Chairs	Institution
Sebastiano Miano	Path Networks, Inc.
Srinivas Narayana	Rutgers University
Paul Chaignon	Isovalent at Cisco
Aurojit Panda	New York University
Gianni Antichi	Politecnico di Milano
Technical Program Committee	Institution
Theophilus Benson	CMU
Xiaoqi Chen	Purdue University
Akshay Narayan	Brown University
Toke Høiland-Jørgensen	Red Hat
Gábor Rétvári	BME-TMIT
Santosh Nagarakatte	Rutgers University
Alireza Sanaee	Huawei
Tamás Lévai	Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Asaf Cidon	Columbia University
Giuseppe Lettieri	University of Pisa
Salvatore Pontarelli	Sapienza - Università di Roma
Alireza Farshin	NVIDIA
Kornilios Kourtis	Isovalent at Cisco
Ryan Stutsman	University of Utah
Ben Pfaff	Feldera
Andrii Vasylevskyi	Meta Platforms Inc
Yang Zhou	UC Berkeley and UC Davis
Yu Jiang	Tsinghua University
Kostis Kaffes	Columbia University
Dan Williams	Virginia Tech
Kahina Lazri	Orange Innovation
Quentin De Coninck	UMONS
Marios Kogias	Imperial College London
Stefano Salsano	Roma Tor Vergata
Israat Haque	Dalhousie University
Ioannis Zarkadas	Columbia University