Searching for Evil

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• Dr Richard Clayton, Security Group, Computer Laboratory, Univ. of Cambridge
• Thursday 06 March 2008, 19:00-20:30
• Lecture Theatre 1, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, J J Thompson Avenue, Madingley Road, Cambridge.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ian Stevens.

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ALL WELCOME - FREE EVENT

Computer security has recently imported a lot of ideas from economics, psychology and sociology, leading to fresh insights and new tools. Dr Clayton will describe one thread of research that draws together techniques from fields as diverse as signals intelligence and sociology to search for artificial communities.

Evildoers online divide roughly into two categories – those who don’t want their websites to be found, such as phishermen, and those who do. The latter category runs from fake escrow sites through dodgy stores postmodern Ponzi (pyramid) schemes. A few of them buy ads, but many set up fake communities in the hope of having victims driven to their sites for free. How can these reputation thieves be detected?

Some of Dr Clayton’s work in security economics and social networking may give an insight into the practical effects of network topology. These tie up in various ways with traffic analysis, long used by the signals intelligence agencies which trawl the airwaves and networks looking for interesting targets. The speaker describes a number of dubious business enterprises that he has unearthed. Recent advances in algorithms, such as Newman’s modularity matrix, have increased the robustness of covert community detection. Much scope remains for wrongdoers to hide themselves better as they become topologically aware; we can expect attack and defence to go through several rounds of co-evolution. We will therefore end up by talking about some strategic issues, such as the extent to which search engines and other service providers could, or should, share information in the interests of wickedness detection.

This talk is part of the IET Cambridge Network - Lectures series.

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