- Research Scientist
Hi there! I am a Visiting Researcher at the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre, part of the Security Group. I am also a Research Scientist at TRM Labs — a leading blockchain intelligence platform, where I work on new methods to trace obscured money flows of illicit actors. I love observing the night sky, and I am part of the Cambridge Astronomical Society. My lovely home is Vietnam where the world's largest cave was discovered. I am proud of our cuisine — don’t miss it if you're visiting the country.
Biography
From January 2022 to January 2025, I was a PhD student at the University of Cambridge (Hughes Hall College), supervised by Professor Alice Hutchings and advised by Professor Ross Anderson within the Security Group. I was fully funded by the Department of Computer Science and Technology and the European Research Council. I completed my Master of Science in Information Science at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 2018 under the supervision of Professor Mizuhito Ogawa and my Bachelor of Science in Information Technology at Vietnam National University in 2016, advised by Professor Xuan Hieu Phan.
From October 2019 to April 2025, I worked as a Research Assistant at the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre under Dr Richard Clayton, Professor Alice Hutchings, and Professor Ross Anderson. From June to July 2024 I visited Delft University of Technology to work with Professor Rolf van Wegberg on a research project co-funded by the Dutch Law Enforcement, focusing on the facilitators of financial cybercrime. From January to July 2019, I was a Research Intern at the National University of Singapore advised by Professor Min Suk Kang (now he is at KAIST). Before that, I was an Assistant Lecturer at Vietnam National University, from October 2016 to September 2017, and a Research Intern at FPT Technology Innovation, FPT Corporation, from December 2014 to December 2015.
Research
My research provides timely empirical measurements to explore cyberspace and its societal impact at scale, with a focus on the underground subcultures that foster online crime and harms. By integrating insights from both academia and industry, my work blends expertise in computer science and criminology to help better understand online threats and inform policy decisions for safety and security.I am also interested in cyberlaw and internet policy. I am fascinated by discovering new things with real impact. I am keen on collaborating with industry professionals, law enforcement, cybercrime offenders, and users of online communities. I believe good research should lead to practical implementations, facilitate other work, and teach us long-lasting lessons through decades instead of solely boosting citations.
I have been collecting and sharing large-scale datasets of online wickedness such as cyberattacks, illicit marketplaces, and online discussions on underground forums. These include over 300,000 defacement attack records spanning two decades, more than 200,000 contractual transactions on the Hack Forums marketplace, and around 65 million posts on extremist forums. All datasets are made available to academic researchers upon request, provided by the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre. Or just drop me a line!
Themes
Teaching
Guest Lectures
- Malicious AI and Dark Side Security (FIT3183) — Monash University, Malaysia (24 Oct 2024), invited by Professor Raphael Phan. Guest lecture on "Beyond Whack-A-Mole: Disrupting Online Crime and Harms through Law Enforcement and Industry Efforts".
Supervisions at Cambridge
- Algorithms:
- Sutton Trust Summer School 2023: 4 groups of 10 students, 4 hours in total
- Sutton Trust Summer School 2022: 4 groups of 12 students, 4 hours in total
- Software and Security Engineering
- Easter 2022‑2023: 11 groups of 23 students for Clare (5), Emmanuel (2), Selwyn (3), Kings’ (9), and Fitzwilliam (4) College, 33 hours in total
- Easter 2021‑2022: 6 groups of 14 students for Kings’ (8) and Robinson (6) College, 18 hours in total
- Databases
- Michaelmas 2022‑2023: 7 groups of 15 students for Clare (5), Emmanuel (2), Selwyn (3), and Downing (5) College, 21 hours in total
- Object-Oriented Programming
- Michaelmas 2022‑2023: 8 groups of 18 students for Gonville & Caius (5), Trinity Hall (4), and Kings’ (9) College, 32 hours in total
- Michaelmas 2021‑2022: 5 groups of 10 students for Robinson (6) and Fitzwilliam (4) College, 20 hours in total
Final‑year Undergraduate Projects at Cambridge
- 2023-2024: Andrei-Cosmin Moroca (Fitzwilliam College) → Software Engineer @ Bloomberg
Teaching at Vietnam National University
- 2016-2017: Fundamental of Informatics (INT1003)
- 2016-2017: Object-Oriented Programming (INT2204)
Professional Activities
- Programme Committees
- The International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC): 2025
- The International Workshop on Cryptoasset Analytics (CAAW@FC): 2025
- The ACM World Wide Web Conference (WWW): 2024
- The ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC): 2022 (shadow)
- Journal Reviewers
- Journal of Cybersecurity: 2024
- External Reviewers
Research Talks
- Assessing the Aftermath: the Effects of a Global Takedown against DDoS-for-hire Services
- [Conference] • USENIX Security Symposium (SEC'25) • Seattle, USA • in person • 13 Aug 2025
- [Conference] • Cambridge Cybercrime Conference (CCC'25) • Cambridge, UK • in person • 23 Jun 2025
- Beyond Whack-A-Mole: Disrupting Online Crime and Harms through Law Enforcement and Industry Efforts
- [Seminar] • University of Cambridge • Cambridge, UK • in person • 03 Dec 2024
- Yet Another Diminishing Spark: Low-level Cyberattacks in the Israel-Gaza Conflict
- [Workshop] • IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops 2025 • Venice, Italy • in person • 30 Jun 2025
- [Conference] • Cambridge Cybercrime Conference (CCC'24) • Cambridge, UK • in person • 10 Jun 2024
- Armed Conflicts and the Changing Behaviour of Low-level Cybercrime Actors
- [Conference] • IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P'24), short talk • San Francisco, USA • in person • 21 May 2024
- No Easy Way Out: the Effectiveness of Deplatforming an Extremist Forum to Suppress Hate and Harassment
- [Workshop] • Workshop on Security and Human Behaviour (SHB'24) • Harvard University, USA • in person • 05 Jun 2024
- [Conference] • IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P'24) • San Francisco, USA • in person • 20 May 2024
- [Conference] • Cambridge Cybercrime Conference (CCC'23) • Cambridge, UK • in person • 22 Jun 2023
- Getting Bored of Cyberwar: the Role of Low-level Cybercrime Actors in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
- [Invited Talk] • DSO National Laboratories • Singapore • in person • 17 May 2024
- [Conference] • ACM World Wide Web Conference (WWW'24) • Sentosa, Singapore • in person • 15 May 2024
- [Conference] • Cambridge Cybercrime Conferencee (CCC'22) • Cambridge, UK • in person • 05 Sep 2022
- ExtremeBB: A Database for Research into Online Hate, Harassment, the Manosphere and Extremism
- [Workshop] • ACL Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH@ACL'23) • Toronto, Canada • online • 13 Jul 2023
- PostCog: A 'Search Engine' Enabling Interdisciplinary Research into Underground Forums at Scale
- [Workshop] • IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops 2022 • Genoa, Italy • in person • 06 Jun 2022
- [Seminar] • University of Cambridge • Cambridge, UK • online • 27 May 2022
- Turning Up the Dial: the Evolution of a Cybercrime Market Through Set-Up, Stable, and Covid-19 Eras
- [Conference] • ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC'20) • Pittsburgh, USA • online • 29 Oct 2020
- Formal Semantics Extraction from Natural Language Specifications for ARM
- [Conference] • International Symposium on Formal Methods (FM'19) • Porto, Portugal • in person • 11 Oct 2019
Podcasts
- Hackting Out: Defacement and Hate Online amid Global Conflicts, with Michael Joyce and Professor Alice Hutchings.
Publications
Peer-reviewed Conferences
- Anh V. Vu, Ben Collier, Daniel R. Thomas, John Kristoff, Richard Clayton, Alice Hutchings. Assessing the Aftermath: the Effects of a Global Takedown against DDoS-for-hire Services. USENIX Security Symposium (SEC'25).
- Anh V. Vu, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson. No Easy Way Out: the Effectiveness of Deplatforming an Extremist Forum to Suppress Hate and Harassment. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P'24)
- Briefing: Anh V. Vu, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson. A Case Study in Censorship. 2023.
- Press coverage: The Register, Light Blue Touchpaper
- Anh V. Vu, Daniel R. Thomas, Ben Collier, Alice Hutchings, Richard Clayton, Ross Anderson. Getting Bored of Cyberwar: Exploring the Role of Low-level Cybercrime Actors in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict. ACM World Wide Web Conference (WWW'24)
- Press coverage: Associated Press, New Scientist, SC Magazine, The Record, Light Blue Touchpaper
- Anh V. Vu, Jack Hughes, Ildiko Pete, Ben Collier, Yi Ting Chua, Ilia Shumailov, Alice Hutchings. Turning Up the Dial: the Evolution of a Cybercrime Market Through Set-up, Stable, and Covid-19 Eras. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC'20)
- Press coverage: Hacker News, Cambridge University Research, Light Blue Touchpaper
- Muoi Tran, Inho Choi, Gi Jun Moon, Anh V. Vu, Min Suk Kang. A Stealthier Partitioning Attack against Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P'20)
- Press coverage: CoinDesk.
- Anh V. Vu, Mizuhito Ogawa. Formal Semantics Extraction from Natural Language Specifications for ARM. International Symposium on Formal Methods (FM'19)
Peer-reviewed Workshops
- Anh V. Vu, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson. Yet Another Diminishing Spark: Low-level Cyberattacks in the Israel-Gaza Conflict. IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW'25).
- Briefing: Anh V. Vu, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson. Defacement Attacks on Israeli Websites.
- Press coverage: Fast Company, Computer Weekly, Infosecurity, Light Blue Touchpaper
- Anh V. Vu, Lydia Wilson, Yi Ting Chua, Ilia Shumailov, Ross Anderson. ExtremeBB: A Database for Large-Scale Research into Online Hate, Harassment, the Manosphere and Extremism. ACL Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH@ACL'23).
- Ildiko Pete, Jack Hughes, Andrew Caines, Anh V. Vu, Harshad Gupta, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson, Paula Buttery. PostCog: A Tool for Interdisciplinary Research into Underground Forums at Scale. IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops(EuroS&PW'22).
Book Chapters
- Lydia Wilson, Anh V. Vu, Ildiko Pete, Yi Ting Chua. Identifying and Collecting Public Domain Data for Tracking Cybercrime and Online Extremism. Book chapter in Open Source Investigations in the Age of Google, World Scientific, 2024.
- Press coverage: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)