Preface

On behalf of the Program Committee, we are delighted to present the Proceedings of the 2nd Microarchitectural Security Conference (uASC 2026). uASC aims to fill a gap in the security research landscape, focusing on advancing our understanding of the security of microarchitectures of all kinds and on all layers. Our goal for this year was to attract high-quality research papers from academia and industry through various formats accommodating the different needs of the researchers. For this reason, we accepted three types of submissions: papers, posters, and talks. Some of the rejected papers were invited to be included as short work-in-progress papers by the Program Committee. For its second edition, uASC received 26 valid submissions. Of these 26 submissions, 17 were full paper submissions, 6 were talks, and 3 were poster submissions. Talks from papers that were already accepted to top-tier conferences (2 out of 6) and posters were directly accepted. From the 4 remaining talks, each received 2-3 reviews, and 2 were accepted for presentation at the conference, resulting in an acceptance rate of 50%. Of the 17 full paper submissions, each receiving 3-4 reviews, the Program Committee accepted 9 submissions, resulting in an acceptance rate of 53%. We highlight the paper with the title “WeMu: Effective and Scalable Emulation of Microarchitectural Weird Machines” that received the highest scores by the reviewers with a Best Paper Award presented at the conference. From the 8 rejected submissions, 4 were invited to be included in the program as work in progress, 3 of which accepted this invitation. All accepted papers, work in progress, and talks were invited to present a poster at the conference. In total, 8 posters will appear at the conference. We thank all members of the Program Committee for their high-quality reviews and deep engagement during the discussion period. We further highlight the excellent reviews by Alyssa Milburn with the Best Reviewer Award presented at the conference. The Program Committee also helped shepherding 3 of the accepted papers to ensure that the concerns from the reviewers were adequately addressed in the camera-ready versions of the papers. Finally, we thank the authors who submitted their work and will present their contributions, as well as the attendees who will participate in the conference. Doubling the number of participants from the first edition of uASC in 2025, we currently have 155+ registrations for uASC in 2026 that is being held in the campus of KU Leuven in Belgium. uASC brings together a large number of academic researchers and industry practitioners together, creating a unique opportunity to network, discuss, engage, and socialize over topics that span microarchitecture security. We look forward to future years and future contributions.​