- PhD Candidate / Research Staff
I am a PhD candidate supervised by Professor Alice Hutchings and advised by Professor Ross Anderson within the Security Group. I am funded by the Department of Computer Science and Technology. I am also affiliated with the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre and part of Hughes Hall College. My personal webpage is here and my CV is here.
Biography
I am a research assistant at the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre since October 2019 under Dr Richard Clayton and Professor Alice Hutchings. I was a research intern at National University of Singapore (2019) advised by Professor Min Suk Kang (now he is at KAIST). I did my MSc in Information Science at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (2018) under Professor Mizuhito Ogawa and my BSc in Information Technology at Vietnam National University (2016), advised by Professor Xuan Hieu Phan.
Research
My research offers timely empirical measurements to explore cyberspace and its societal impact at scale, focusing on underground subcultures fostering online crime and harm. The resulting insights help better understand online threats and inform policy decisions for safety and security. I am also interested in cyberlaw and internet policy. I am keen on collaborating with industry professionals, law enforcement, cybercrime offenders, and users of online communities. My recent work explores how these online communities react to external events, such as law enforcement and industry interventions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and armed conflicts. Before joining Cambridge, I worked on Bitcoin peer-to-peer network security and applied formal methods for malware analysis.
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
Supervisions at Cambridge
- Final-year Undergraduate Projects: Andrei-Cosmin Moroca (2023-24)
- Algorithms: Sutton Trust Summer School 2022 (12 students), Sutton Trust Summer School 2023 (10 students)
- Databases: Michaelmas 2022-23 for Clare, Emmanuel, Selwyn, and Downing College (15 students)
- Software and Security Engineering: Easter 2021-22, for King's and Robinson College (14 students), Easter 2022-23 for Clare, Emmanual, Selwyn, King's, and Fitzwilliam College (23 students)
- Object-Oriented Programming: Michaelmas 2021-22 for Robinson and Fitzwilliam College (10 students); Michaelmas 2022-23 for Gonville & Caius, Trinity Hall, and Kings' College (18 students)
Teaching at Vietnam National University
- INT1003: Fundamental of Informatics (2016-17)
- INT2204: Object-Oriented Programming (2016-17)
Professional Activities
- Reviewers: IMC'22 (shadow), WWW'24
- External Reviewers: EuroS&PW'22, USENIX Security'23, USENIX Security'24
- Research Talks and Presentations:
- Yet Another Diminishing Spark: Low-level Cyberattacks in the Israel-Gaza Conflict
- CCC'24 Cambridge Cybercrime Conference, University of Cambridge, UK (upcoming in person, 10 Jun 2024)
- No Easy Way Out: the Efficacy of Deplatforming Forums to Suppress Hate and Harassment
- Bored of Cyberwar: the Role of Low-level Cybercrime Actors in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict:
- ExtremeBB: A Database for Research into Online Hate, Harassment, the Manosphere and Extremism
- WOAH@ACL'23 ACL Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms, Toronto, Canada (online, 13 Jul 2023)
- PostCog: A 'Search Engine' Enabling Interdisciplinary Research into Underground Forums at Scale
- WACCO@EuroS&P'22 IEEE EuroS&P Workshop on Attackers and Cyber-Crime Operations, Genoa, Italy (in person, 06 Jun 2022)
- Turning Up the Dial: the Evolution of a Cybercrime Market Through Set-Up, Stable, and Covid-19 Eras
- IMC'20 ACM Internet Measurement Conference, Pittsburgh, USA (online, 29 Oct 2020)
- Formal Semantics Extraction from Natural Language Specifications for ARM
- FM'19 International Symposium on Formal Methods, Porto, Portugal (in person, 11 Oct 2019)
- Yet Another Diminishing Spark: Low-level Cyberattacks in the Israel-Gaza Conflict
Publications
Under submission
- Anh V. Vu, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson. Yet Another Diminishing Spark: Low-level Cyberattacks in the Israel-Gaza Conflict.
- Briefing: Anh V. Vu, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson. Defacement Attacks on Israeli Websites. 2023.
- Press coverage: Fast Company, Computer Weekly, Infosecurity, Light Blue Touchpaper
Peer-reviewed conferences
- 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, 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 EuroS&P Workshop on Attackers and Cyber-Crime Operations (WACCO@EuroS&P'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)