- PhD Candidate
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.
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 social impact at scale, focusing on underground subcultures fostering online crime and harms. The resulting insights help better understand online threats and inform policy decisions for safety and security. I am collecting (and sharing) large-scale datasets of online crime and harms, such as cyberattacks, illicit online marketplaces, and discussions on cybercrime and extremist forums. My recent work explores how these online communities react to external events, such as law enforcement interventions, industry disruptions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and armed conflicts such as the Russia-Ukraine and the Israel-Palestine wars. I am also interested in cyberlaw and internet policy. Before joining Cambridge, I worked on Bitcoin peer-to-peer network security and applied formal methods for malware analysis. I enjoy the interdisciplinary work that I am doing, which gives me broader perspectives on criminology, psychology, economics, ethics, policy and law.
Themes
Teaching
Supervisions at Cambridge
- 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
- Conference reviewers: IMC'22 (shadow), WWW'24
- Conference external reviewers: EuroS&PW'22, USENIX Security'23, USENIX Security'24
- Talks and presentations: FM'19, IMC'20, EuroS&PW'22, CCC'22, CCC'23, WOAH@ACL'23, S&P'24 (upcoming)
Publications
- 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, LBT
- 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. Under submission, 2023.
- Briefing: Anh V. Vu, Alice Hutchings, Ross Anderson. Defacement Attacks on Israeli Websites. 2023.
- Press coverage: Associated Press, New Scientist, SC Magazine, The Record, Computer Weekly, Fast Company, Infosecurity, LBT
- 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.
- 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).
- 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, LBT
- 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).
