Announcing the Final Examination of Kieran Human for the degree of Master of Science
Cryptocurrencies are one of the most prominent applications of blockchain systems. While cryptocurrencies promise many features and advantages, such as decentralization, anonymity, and ease of access, they will also allow for abuse. For instance, as documented in various recent works, cryptocurrencies have been frequently abused in various forms of cybercrime. Despite the plethora of works on measuring and understanding the abuse of cryptocurrencies in the digital space, there has been no work on systemizing this knowledge by comprehensively understanding those contributions, contrasting them based on their merit, and understanding the gap in this research space. This thesis initiates the systematic review and understanding of the literature on cryptocurrencies and their utilization in cybercrime. Starting with a rich set of research efforts published exclusively at some of the most highly selective avenues in the cybersecurity research community, we build a taxonomy of cryptocurrencies, enumerating the most prominent ones based on their use. We then categorize the literature in this space based on the built tools concerning their objectives and targeted blockchain systems. We then extend our effort by categorizing the reviewed work on cybercrime based on the type of attacks (coordinated vs individual fraud) and targeted entity (marketplace vs. exchange). Each of those elements in our taxonomy enumerates various aspects of abuse, including the use in underground forums, the trade of drugs, weapons, and stolen credentials, money laundering, malware distribution, ransomware, etc. A discussion of the gaps that accompanies our review calls for further investigation
Committee in Charge:
David Mohaisen, Chair, Computer Science
Xueqiang Wang, Computer Science
Cliff Zou, Computer Science
Read More