Computer Laboratory

Alice Hutchings

**********NEWS**********

The 2024 Cambridge Cybercrime Conference will be held on Monday 10 June in the Department of Computer Science & Technology, University of Cambridge. Registration is now open.

Papers soon to be released include:

  • Breaking the ice: Using transparency to overcome the cold start problem in an underground market, co-authored with Tina Marjanov, Konstantinos Ioannidis, Tom Hyndman and Nicolas Seyedzadeh, to appear at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) 2024.
  • Getting Bored of Cyberwar: Exploring the role of low-level cybercrime actors in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, co-authored with Anh V. Vu, Daniel Thomas, Ben Collier, Richard Clayton and Ross Anderson, to appear in the proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024.
  • Position Paper: The amplification of online deviancy through the language of violent crime, war, and aggression, to appear in IEEE Security and Privacy.
  • Autism disclosures and cybercrime discourse on a large underground forum, co-authored with Jessica Man and Gilberto Atondo-Siu, to appear in the proceedings of the APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime) 2023. Awarded best student paper.
  • Hacker’s Paradise: Analysing music in a cybercrime forum, co-authored with Anna Talas, to appear in the proceedings of the APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime) 2023.
  • In the market for a Botnet? An in-depth analysis of botnet-related listings on Darkweb marketplaces, co-authored with Dimitrios Georgoulias, Jens Myrup Pedersen, Morten Falch, and Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis, to appear in the proceedings of the APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime) 2023.
  • No Easy Way Out: The effectiveness of deplatforming an extremist forum to suppress hate and harassment, co-authored with Anh V. Vu and Ross Anderson, to appear in the proceedings of the 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P) 2024.

My most recent publications include:

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I am Professor of Emergent Harms in the Security Group at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of King's College. I am also Director of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre, an interdisciplinary initiative combining expertise from computer science, criminology, and law. We take a data-driven approach to improve our understanding of criminal activity and develop robust identifiers and evidence of criminal behaviour. An important goal of the project is to provide data to other academics and therefore improve the quantity and quality of cybercrime research.

Prior to taking up a lectureship I was a researcher at the Computer Laboratory from January 2014 to October 2018, and a College Research Associate at St John's College, Cambridge, from 2017 to 2018. Before moving to Cambridge I was a Senior Research Analyst at the Australian Institute of Criminology from 2011 to 2013. Before entering academia I had a varied research career in local government, parliament, law, and private investigation (intellectual property). I first began researching cybercrime in the late 1990s, while working in industry (mainly relating to domain name misuse and software counterfeiting).

Diversity is important to me. I helped set up the department's LGBTQ+@CL network. I also made a list to highlight some academic researchers who do excellent cybercrime research but who I think are under-appreciated. This is not a list of women, it's a list that only has women and non-binary academic researchers on it. Just like some citation lists, editor lists, program committee membership lists, and conference agendas are not lists of (but only include) men.

Research interests

Current and previous grants include:

  • Interdisciplinary Cybercrime Project (iCrime) (PI), funded by the European Research Council (ERC), 2021-2026.
  • AP4L: Adaptive PETs to Protect & emPower People during Life Transitions (Co-I), funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), 2022-25.
  • COVID-19 Tracking Covid Cybercrime and Abuse (Co-I), funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), 2020-22.
  • CybercrimeNLP (CC-NLP): A natural language processing toolkit for the interdisciplinary analysis of underground online forums (PI), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), 2020-21.
  • Data science approaches to understanding key actors on online hacking forums (Co-I), funded by the Alan Turing Institute, 2017-18.
  • Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (Co-I), funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), 2015-20.

I am an interdisciplinary researcher. Specialising in cybercrime and online harms, I bridge the gap between criminology and computer science. Generally, my research interests include understanding offenders, cybercrime events, and the prevention and disruption of online crime and harms. Specific topics I am particularly interested in include:

I established and maintain the Cambridge Computer Crime Database (CCCD), a database of computer crime events where the offender has been arrested, charged and/or prosecuted in the United Kingdom. Please get in touch with me if you have data for inclusion in the CCCD, or if you are an academic considering setting up a similar database in another country. Cybercrime is an international issue, and this should be reflected in the data. I'm happy to assist setting up the relevant data collection mechanisms, and to ensure similar variables are being captured for comparative purposes.

Research students

I am currently supervising the following PhD candidates:

My past completed PhD students are:

  • Jack Hughes: 'Computational criminology: At scale quantitative analysis of the evolution of cybercrime forums' (2019-23).

I have supervised the following MPhil research projects:

  • Jack Hughes: 'An analysis of cybercrime activity within an underground gaming forum' (2018-19).
  • Gilberto Atondo Siu: 'Automated NLP approaches for currency exchange analysis in underground forums' (2019-20).
  • Nnaemeka Obodoekwe: 'Automatically analyzing negative interactions and relationships between members of an underground forum' (2019-20).
  • Anna Talas: 'Hacker’s Paradise: Analysing music in a cybercrime forum' (2022-23).
  • Jessica Man: 'An analysis of autism-related conversations on cybercrime forums' (2022-23).

If you are interested in applying to Cambridge for a research-oriented MPhil or PhD in cybercrime or a related area please get in touch regarding your research topic of interest. More information on the two programmes, including application requirements and information on initial research proposals, can be found on the MPhil in Advanced Computer Science and PhD in Computer Science pages at the Computer Laboratory.

If you are a Cambridge computer science student interested in an undergraduate or Part III project, please contact me by email.

Teaching

I am currently teaching:

Program Committees and reviewing

I am involved in organising the following conferences and workshops:

I have been a Program Committee member for the following conferences and workshops:

  • USENIX Security 2023-2024
  • The Web Conference 2022
  • IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland 2022)
  • ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2021)
  • Enigma 2021-2022
  • Workshop on Cybersecurity Experimentation and Test (CSET) 2020 & 2023
  • International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC) 2020-2021
  • Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) 2020, 2023-2024
  • APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime) 2015-2019, 2022-2024

I am area editor (cybercrime) for the Journal of Cybersecurity. I have also reviewed submissions for the following academic journals:

  • American Behavioral Scientist
  • Communications of the ACM
  • Computers & Society
  • Crime Science
  • Crime, Law and Social Change
  • Criminology
  • Criminology & Criminal Justice
  • Criminology & Public Policy
  • Global Crime
  • IEEE Security and Privacy
  • International Journal of Cyber Criminology
  • Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice
  • Journal of Experimental Criminology
  • Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology
  • Social Science Computer Review
  • Sociological Forum

I am a member of the ESRC Peer Review College.

Committees

My committee roles include:

  • Co-Chair of the Department's Ethics Committee (from 2019)
  • Member of the University Research Ethics Committee (from 2023)
  • Member of the Department's Equality and Diversity Committee (from 2023)

In 2015, I was elected to serve on the University Council, the principal executive and policy making body of the University of Cambridge. In this capacity I served on a number of other committees and working groups, including the Governance Review Working Group, the University Council's Business Committee, the Risk Steering Committee, and the Sports Committee. I was also co-opted as a member of the Council of the School of Technology. In October 2018, I resigned from the University Council.

While a member of the University's research staff (2014-2018), I was an elected committee member of the Postdocs of Cambridge (PdOC) Society and a member of the Computer Laboratory's Research Staff Forum.


Email
alice.hutchings [at] cl.cam.ac.uk

Phone
+44 (0) 1223 763660

Office
GE22

Mail
Dr Alice Hutchings
Computer Laboratory
15 JJ Thomson Avenue
Cambridge CB3 0FD
United Kingdom

Pronouns
she/her