Fully funded 3-year EPSRC iCASE PhD studentship in Cybercrime Measurement

Applications are invited from candidates with undergraduate or masters qualifications (1st class) from all disciplines relevant to computer security, including engineering, sciences, and the social sciences. All studentships offer a generous tax-free stipend and tuition fees to support UK/EU students. Overseas students are also welcome to apply (and will be topped up). PhD scholars spend the first year undertaking comprehensive formal training followed by two-three years of focused research

Research focus:
Half of all crime is cybercrime but it is understudied. Work to improve the measurement of cybercrime can enable us to monitor improvement, design and evaluate interventions, and inform regulators. Collection and analysis of cybercrime data enables the measurement of cybercrime. We have access to existing datasets on distributed denial of service attacks and botnets which can be analysed and
complemented with new measurements. Criminal websites can be scraped to measure ponzi schemes, escrow fraud, and accommodation fraud. Honeypots can collect details of attempted attacks, including on industrial control systems. Passive network measurements can observe side effects of attacks and active measurements can help triangulate them. Potential students are welcome to propose their own
variations on this theme.

Security group website:
https://www.strath.ac.uk/research/strathclydesecurityresearchgroup

The security group at Strathclyde has seven full time academics. The group aims to develop a cohort of students with expertise in systems security with links to statistics, psychology, human behaviour, and economics. The group has a thriving PhD program with 23 current PhD students working on Privacy Technologies, Cybercrime measurement, Malware, Anonymity, Machine learning, and Industrial IoT security.

Important Dates:

This advert has a nominal end date of 1st July 2019, however we will make appointments as soon as we have identified candidates with the right background. We therefore recommend interested candidates to informally contact Dr. Shishir Nagaraja ([Email Address Removed]) or Dr. Daniel Thomas ([Email Address Removed]) at the earliest. Website: http://www.shishirnagaraja.com

Application portal:
http://pgr.strath.ac.uk/
Please mention the advertisement (FindaPhD Cybercrime Measurement) in the application comments.