Uncovering the vulnerable: Exploring the issue of TCP reflective amplification in the network of an ISP

The rapid growth of internet-connected devices has led to a significant increase in the number of cyber attacks, resulting in security challenges related to IoT. Researchers have discovered a new attack technique that can be used for launching large DDoS attacks, which involves TCP reflective amplification by abusing middleboxes and IoT devices....

Behind the Botnet: Evaluating Avalanche's security controls using a reconstruction of its anatomy from forensic evidence

How did Avalanche, a botnet with an active lifetime of 8 years while serving 20+ malware families, ensure a smooth operation of business? Avalanche had the attention of security researchers and law enforcement, yet it managed to persevere for a long period of time.<br/>In this work, we answer this question by analyzing Avalanche’s security...

You Win Some You Ransom: Reconstructing the ransomware ecosystem using ground truth communication data of the Conti ransomware gang

Ransomware has evolved over the years, shifting from widespread attacks targeting individuals to focused attacks on businesses and agencies. These attacks are performed by ransomware gangs while establishing interaction within the ransomware ecosystem. In this thesis, the ransomware ecosystem is posited as being constructed of three separate sub...

Dirty Digital Washing Machines: Identifying money laundering in mixing services

Money laundering has been in existence for a long time, but with recent developments in cryptocurrency technologies, using them as a new method of laundering criminal proceeds has become available to a wider audience of criminals due to mixer services. Bitcoin can be considered pseudonymous, and Mixer services attempt to obfuscate the money...

Detecting BestMixer: An exploratory study on centralized mixing services

Mixing services try to distort cash flow tracking of cryptocurrencies and obfuscate the origin of customers’ earnings by substituting customers’ cryptocurrency funds with the funds of other customers or the mixers’ private assets. This quality makes mixing services interesting for money laundering, and they are therefore often used by criminals....

Countering money laundering: Implications of the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive on virtual currency exchanges in the Netherlands

In order to combat financially-economically related crime the government implemented a new directive ensuring that virtual currency exchanges now have to adhere to requirements from legislation countering money laundering. This thesis researches what the extent is of effects that this legislation posed to the daily operations of virtual currency...

Fighting Child Sexual Abuse Material better together: A stakeholder central review of the government policies

This study aims to make recommendations about how the Internet can be more thoroughly cleaned of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), focusing on the Dutch government policies. In the past years, several organizations, including the European Commission, called out the Netherlands for the role Dutch companies have in the hosting of CSAM. According...

Risky Business: Analysing the security behaviour of cybercriminals active on a darknet market

Cybercrime thrives and online anonymous markets, or darknet markets, play an important role in the cybercriminal ecosystem. Vendors active on darknet markets invest in security mechanisms to compromise the availability or usefulness of evidence to Law Enforcement Agencies. Therefore, difficulties arise in linking identities or machines to...

Shift Happens: Digital Transformation in the Humanitarian Sector: Towards an actionable assessment framework for Digital Transformation in the humanitarian sector

To provide insight into factors that play a role for DT in the humanitarian sector, a combination of literature and expert interviews was used to identify relevant criteria for the humanitarian sector. In accordance with prevailing literature, these factors have been categorised in people, process and technology factors. People factors include...

Online Anonieme Markten - Geoattributie op Productgroep

Dit rapport is geschreven in het kader van de tweede fase van het vak ’Bachelor-eindproject’ van de bacheloropleiding Technische Bestuurskunde aan de Technische Universiteit Delft. Het rapport is geschreven naar aanleiding van het issue-paper dat ik voor de eerste fase van dit project geschreven heb over het bestrijden van financiële,...

Target selection regarding financial malware attacks within the Single Euro Payments Area: Mixed methods research: The expectations of experts versus the patterns shown by the Zeus dataset