WDF-WHISPER-SAI4CSS 2026
Workshops WDF, WHISPER, and SAI4CSS at ITASEC-SERICS 2026

Table of Contents

These are the joint proceedings of three workshops held at the 2nd Joint National Conference on Cybersecurity (ITASEC & SERICS 2026), namely:

• Workshop on Digital Forensics (WDF 2026),
• Workshop on Hidden Information, Steganography, Privacy, and Emerging Risks (WHISPER 2026), and
• International Workshop on Symbiotic AI for Cyber Social Security: Human-AI Collaboration for Social Resilience and Trustworthy Digital Ecosystems (SAI4CSS 2026).

The 2nd Joint National Conference on Cybersecurity (ITASEC & SERICS 2026) was held in Cagliari, Italy, on February 9-13, 2026.

• Preface for WDF 2026: WDF provides a forum for digital forensic consultants (CTU/CTP), industry, law enforcement, judiciary, and academia to discuss current challenges and future directions in Digital Forensics. It emphasizes practical issues relevant to real investigations, the limitations of current tools and methodologies in mobile, memory, and IoT forensics, and the forensic analysis of AI-generated content, considering both technical and legal perspectives. More information about the workshop can be found at the WDF web site.
  There were 7 papers submitted for peer-review to WDF 2026. Out of these, 4 papers were accepted for this volume, all as regular papers.
• Preface for WHISPER 2026: WHISPER brings together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to explore the intersection of AI, steganography, digital watermarking, and privacy. It focuses on emerging risks, defensive and adversarial strategies, and the dual role of AI as both a potential threat and a powerful safeguard in the protection, tracing, and authentication of information. More information about the workshop can be found at the WHISPER web site.
  There were 6 papers submitted for peer-review to WHISPER 2026. Out of these, 2 papers were accepted for this volume, all as regular papers.
• Preface for SAI4CSS 2026: SAI4CSS is a multidisciplinary forum exploring the convergence between Cyber-Social Security (CSS) and Symbiotic AI (SAI). It fosters dialogue among computer scientists, social scientists, psychologists, legal experts, and policy-makers on human-centered, explainable, and ethically aligned AI frameworks that can detect, interpret, and mitigate emerging social-cyber threats such as hate speech, misinformation, online gender-based violence, and digital manipulation. More information about the workshop can be found at the SAI4CSS web site.
  There were 13 papers submitted for peer-review to SAI4CSS 2026. Out of these, 12 papers were accepted for this volume, all as regular papers.

1st Workshop on Digital Forensics (WDF 2026)

• Detecting Localized Deepfakes: How Well Do Synthetic Image Detectors Handle Inpainting? 1-15
  Serafino Pandolfini, Lorenzo Pellegrini, Matteo Ferrara, Davide Maltoni
• Forensic Attribution of TikTok Video Provenance Through Metadata and Re-Encoding Analysis 16-28
  Domenico Valentino Lo Faro, Luca Guarnera, Sebastiano Battiato
• Towards a Quality Assessment Framework for LLM-Based Decision Support in Digital Forensics 29-43
  Fausto Galvan, Pier Luca Montessoro, Federico Costantini, Francesco Crisci, Luca Baron
• An Explainable Memory Forensics Approach for Malware Analysis 44-61
  Silvia Lucia Sanna, Davide Maiorca, Giorgio Giacinto

1st Workshop on Hidden Information, Steganography, Privacy, and Emerging Risks (WHISPER 2026)

• Zero-Watermarking for Hyperspectral Images: Experiments and Robustness Evaluation 62-72
  Gianluca De Lucia, Alessio Merlo, Diego Romano
• Prompt Injection in Scientific Peer Review with ChatGPT 73-83
  Angelica Liguori, Luca Caviglione, Daniela Gallo, Massimo Guarascio, Giuseppe Manco

1st International Workshop on Symbiotic AI for Cyber Social Security: Human-AI Collaboration for Social Resilience and Trustworthy Digital Ecosystems (SAI4CSS)

• An AI-Supported Architecture for Trusted Cyber Threat Intelligence in Industrial IoT Systems 84-94
  Daniele Granata, Antonio Iannaccone
• Federated Learning with Homomorphic Encryption for Confidential Healthcare Data Sharing 95-104
  Domenico Lofù, Paolo Sorino, Carmelo Antonio Ardito, Tommaso Di Noia, Eugenio Di Sciascio
• Symbiotic AI for Cyber Social Security: A Human-Centered SaaS Against Cyberbullying 105-119
  Andrea Chezzi, Simone Lupo, Alessia Anna Catalano, Roberto Vadacca, Christian Catalano, Giorgio Fontana, Luca Mainetti
• Towards Proactive Cyber Social Security: A Phase-Aware AI Architecture for Online Grooming Prevention 120-125
  Alessia Anna Catalano, Roberto Vadacca, Christian Catalano, Corrado Aaron Visaggio, Antonietta Curci
• Symbiotic AI for Detecting and Mitigating Online Child Sexual Abuse Material 126-138
  Gabriel Cellammare, Francesca Mantini, Vito Marchionna, Massimiliano Morga, Davide Pio Posa
• Evaluating Trustworthiness and Interpretability of eXplainable AI Techniques for Cyberbullying Detection 139-143
  Giuseppe Loseto, Filippo Gramegna, Agnese Pinto, Floriano Scioscia, Michele Ruta
• VolWeb Meets YARA for Socio-Technical Incident Response 144-151
  Marco Ferrara, Davide Pio Posa, Gennaro Del Campo, Andrea Garavaglia
• Securing People by Hybrid Offensive Security: A Preliminary Case Study for Social Safety 152-166
  Vita Santa Barletta, Danilo Caivano, Samuele del Vescovo, Giuseppe Fenza, Vincenzo Loia, Pio Pasquale Trotta
• Towards Responsible Prompt Design: A Framework for Secure and Ethical GenAI Outputs 167-175
  Miriana Calvano, Antonio Curci, Giuseppe Desolda, Antonio Piccinno, Alfonso Pio Pretorino
• Urban Security and Social Trust: Evaluating the Resilience of Smart City Architectures Through Adversarial Simulation 176-188
  Nicola Balzano, Vita Santa Barletta, Danilo Caivano, Vincenzo Cantatore, Luigi Grosso, Pietro Loparco, Domenico Mastrolonardo, Vincenzo Turturro, Leo Ventura
• Gender-Based Violence in Fake News: A Corpus Analysis of Semantic Collocations 189-199
  Patrizia Sorianello, Giovanni Vinciguerra
• Operationalizing Human Factors in Cybersecurity: The MORPHEUS Approach to Measuring Phishing Susceptibility 200-210
  Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, Rosa Lanzilotti