I have the privilege of serving as co-chair of the program committee for the Anti-Phishing Working Group’s eCrime Researchers Summit, to be held October 23-24 in Las Croabas, Puerto Rico. This has long been one of my favorite conferences to participate in, because it is held in conjunction with the APWG general meeting. This ensures that participation in the conference is evenly split between academia and industry, which leads to in-depth discussions of the latest trends in online crime. It also provides a unique audience for academic researchers to discuss their work, which can foster future collaboration.

Some of my joint work with Richard Clayton appearing at this conference has been discussed on this blog, from measuring the effectiveness of website take-down in fighting phishing to uncovering the frequent lack of cooperation between security firms. As you will see from the call for papers, the conference seeks submissions on all aspects of online crime, not just phishing. Paper submissions are due August 3, so get to work so we can meet up in Puerto Rico this October!

Topics of interest include:

• Case studies of current attack methods, including phishing, malware, rogue antivirus, pharming, crimeware, botnets, and emerging techniques
• Case studies of online advertising fraud, including click fraud, malvertising, cookie stuffing, and affiliate fraud
• Case studies of large-scale take-downs, such as coordinated botnet disruption
• Technical, legal, political, social and psychological aspects of fraud and fraud prevention
• Economics of online crime, including measurement studies of underground economies and models of e-crime
• Uncovering and disrupting online criminal collaboration and gangs
• Financial infrastructure of e-crime, including payment processing and money laundering
• Techniques to assess the risks and yields of attacks and the effectiveness of countermeasures
• Delivery techniques, including spam, voice mail, social network and web search manipulation; and countermeasures
• Techniques to avoid detection, tracking and take-down; and ways to block such techniques
• Best practices for detecting and avoiding damages to critical internet infrastructure, such as DNS and SCADA, from electronic crime activities

For full details on submission requirements and deadlines, see the call for papers.