International Cybercrime Research Summer Award 2022

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A 1,000 USD Award

Description 

In early 2022, the chat log files of the most prolific ransomware group, named Conti, were published online, opening the door to a deep analysis on the operation of the group. Already, a few security researchers dug into the data, including Brian Krebbs, Forescout, Malwarebytes and more. Yet we believe that much insight on cybercrime operations has yet to be extracted from this data leak. This is an award competition for the best research done by a student that analyses these leaked files from the perspective of criminology using computer science knowledge. 

To participate in the award, there are two steps.

  1. First, the student has to send an email from its educational institution account to [email protected] specifying their names, and a summary of the idea they plan to work on (max. 250 words). Deadline for this email is July 15st, 2022 AOE. This first communication step is to announce the student’s intention to participate in the award. Only sending the email is enough to enter the award competition, you don’t need our approval to start working.

  2. Second, the final work has to be a research blog sent to [email protected] by August 31st, 2022 AOE. The format of the blog can be .pdf, .doc, Google docs or a webpage.

Important Dates

  • To send an email with your research proposal: July 15st, 2022 AOE. 

  • To send an email with the result of your research as a blog post: August 31st, 2022 AOE.

Evaluation

All the received blogs by email by August 31st, 2022 AOE. will be evaluated and one will be selected as the winner of the award. Only one proposal will be the winner. The selection of the winner will be announced around September 10th, 2022 by personal email. 

Conditions

  • Students from any country can apply.

  • You must be a student. It can be University or high school. As proof, all communications from participants must be sent with an institutional school email. 

  • The total amount of money for the scholarship is 1,000 USD, given to only one winner, when the blog is published. 

  • You commit to do your research and in case of winning publish one blog for the Stratosphere IPS group, with the results.

  • If you win, payment of 1,000 USD will be done as a remote transfer to your personal bank account.

Work Criteria

We are searching to foster the work of students in cybercrime by using computer science to better understand this type of crime. The work can be in any topic that shows a use of computer science to do a quantitative or qualitative analysis of the Conti files in order to explore a research idea. Example of cybercrime research can be found here:

Download of Files

Here you can download the Conti files that need to be analysed (the discussions are in Russian, you can use Google Translate if needed): https://share.vx-underground.org/Conti/   

Any question, please send it to [email protected]

About the Award

This award is the result of a collaboration between Masarah Paquet-Clouston from the School of criminology at University of Montreal https://crim.umontreal.ca/accueil/ and Sebastian Garcia from Stratosphere Laboratory of the Czech Technical University in Prague (https://www.stratosphereips.org/, part of https://aic.fel.cvut.cz/). The money for the award was originally given by BlackHat USA as a stipend for the conference talk: The Mass Effect: How Opportunistic Workers Drift into Cybercrime. 

PDF with this proposal to download

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZK2a_5sgtweyKm1KbmC0NiBOa4X4mJjB/view?usp=sharing

Article Link: International Cybercrime Research Summer Award 2022 — Stratosphere IPS