A School for Scoundrels: how cybercriminals learn their trade

Why cybercriminals get involved with ideological hacking; how restricting customer data sharing by firms can reduce financial fraud; and 'A School for Scoundrels: How Newbies learn in the Cybercrime Ecosystem'.

These are just three of the talks being given at this year's Cambridge Cybercrime Conference on Monday 22 June. It takes place here in the William Gates Building. 

At the event, there will also be sessions on understanding offender behaviour, and how AI can help detect sophisticated phishing attacks.

The conference will bring together an international group of cybercrime researchers from countries including the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Australia, Norway, Morocco, Canada and Germany.

Our analyses enhance our understanding of what works when it comes to preventing cybercrime...ensuring interventions actually reduce crimes rather than shifting them.

Prof Alice Hutchings, Director, Cambridge Cybercrime Centre

The Cambridge Cybercrime Conference
This annual event has taken place every year since 2016. It's organised by the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre, a multi-disciplinary initiative based here in the Department. Since 2015, researchers at the centre have been collecting very substantial datasets relating to cybercrime and have negotiated access to other feeds of cybercrime data.

"We mine and correlate these datasets to extract information about criminal activity," explains Professor Alice Hutchings, the Centre's director. "Our analyses enhance our understanding of what works when it comes to preventing cybercrime, replacing 'best guesses' with empirical data, and ensuring interventions actually reduce crimes rather than shifting them."

A growing number of academic institutions and research centres are have entered into agreements with the Centre to use this data for their research. And the Cambridge Cybercrime Conference gives them the opportunity to come together and share what they are working on.

Work in progress
At the June event, researchers from University College London will discuss their study of cybercrime 'as a service'. The supply chain that supports it by enabling the sale of sophisticated, user-friendly toolkits to cybercriminals is making it easier for bad actors to get started, they say. But they will also be suggesting targeted strategies that could disrupt such supply chains. 

Meanwhile, researchers from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement will share their work on identifying the learning journeys by which tech-curious young people progress from playfully experimenting with technical skills to going on to use them in criminal hacking and sometimes other cyber-offences. 

The agenda for the whole conference can be seen here. And places at the event – both in-person and online – can be booked here.