COLLOQUIUM

Understanding Spam Economics

Chris Kanich

PhD Candidate

Computer Science & Engineering Department

University of California

Friday, February 10, 2012
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Fuller Labs 320

Abstract:

Over the past two decades, the Internet has become an essential tool in the lives of millions of people. Unfortunately, this success has also attracted cybercriminals who exploit the Internet as a platform for illicit gain.

Perhaps the most familiar scam is sending unsolicited advertisements (spam), clogging inboxes and putting people's computers at risk of dangerous malware infections. Understanding the mechanisms and effectiveness of these scams is essential to effective countermeasures to cybercrime. In this talk, I'll explain the modern spamming landscape and present projects that help us better understand how spammers make their money online. One project uses the technique of botnet infiltration to examine a spam campaign from the point of view of the cybercriminals. Botnet infiltration allows us to measure their operation including the advertisements' effectiveness and the worldwide use of spam filtering techniques. The second project exploits key information leaks on the part of spammers to learn about the modern affiliate marketing-based spam ecosystem, from estimating their worldwide gross revenue, to understanding customer demographics and their most popular products. I'll also introduce future work in this space and outline research directions that exploit criminal's online architecture and motivations to develop effective defenses.

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Chris Kanich is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California at San Diego in the Computer Science & Engineering Department. His research interests lie within security and computer networks, with an emphasis on the economic and human elements of Internet security. He received a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Purdue University in 2005, and will complete his Ph.D. at UC San Diego in 2012.

Host: Prof. Craig Wills

Refreshments will be served at 10:45 a.m. in Fuller Labs –lounge area.