<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2008</div><div>Time: 2:30 p.m.</div><div>Place: Ryerson 251, 1100 E. 58th Street</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>----------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Speaker:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Stefan Savage</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>From:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of California, San Diego</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Web page:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><a href="http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~savage/">http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~savage/</a></span><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#144FAE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span></font></div><!--StartFragment-->
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<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Title: Exploring the Underground
Economy</div><!--StartFragment--><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Abstract: New threats are inevitably
driven by changes in opportunity. Nowhere is this more true than on the
Internet, where a decade of e-commerce growth has imparted significant value to
the data stored on servers and user desktops. At the same time, the
combination of widespread software homogeneity and unrestricted high-speed
connectivity have created “perfect storm” conditions for large-scale outbreaks
of network-borne infections. Indeed, over the last decade, the ability to
easily compromise large numbers of Internet hosts has emerged as the backbone
of a vibrant criminal economy encompassing unsolicited bulk-email (SPAM),
denial-of-service extortion, piracy, phishing and identity theft. Using
tools such as worms, viruses, and web-based exploits, the technical cadre of
this community can leverage a small investment in software into a large-scale
virtual commodity – hundreds of thousands of remotely controlled “bot” hosts –
that are then used, resold and leased to others. This capability effectively
provides a platform upon which higher-level criminal applications are deployed
(such as SPAM forwarding, DDoS, piracy, etc.) In this talk I will
describe the growth of this ecosystem, explore a particular criminal
operation in depth and present preliminary data quantifying the emergence of a
vibrant third-party market economy in support of on-line crime.</div><!--StartFragment--></body></html>