Yichao Wang, a PhD student from the School of Computing and the Institute of Cyber Security for Society (iCSS), has won the Best Student Paper Award at the 9th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP 2023). The award-winning paper was co-authored with his PhD supervisors, Dr Budi Arief (iCSS Operations Lead) and Professor Julio Hernandez-Castro (iCSS Core Member), and was presented at the conference held from 22 to 24 February 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal.
The paper, titled “Dark Ending: What Happens when a Dark Web Market Closes down”, explores and documents the interesting observations before and after the closure of the dark web marketplace, offering valuable insights into behaviours, reactions, and dynamics of dark web communities. The paper was commended for innovative use of market’s associated forums as a data source for observing market events. It also opens up the possibility of predicting potential market closures, thereby providing adequate early warning, both to prevent people from being victimised and to help law enforcement agencies compile evidence before closures.
Yichao said: “We are very glad that our work has been recognised among papers written by other highly experienced researchers. We believe our results have contributed towards a better understanding of the dynamic nature of the modern dark web market, which can help in combatting criminal activities in the dark web.”
The award-winning paper can be found at: https://doi.org/10.5220/0011681600003405. The authors’ version of the paper is available from the University of Kent’s Academic Repository (KAR) at: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/100540/.