November 4 @ 09:00 – November 7 @ 16:00
APWG eCrime 2025 examines essential factors for managing the impacts of the global cybercrime plexus to secure IT users, commercial enterprises, governments, critical infrastructures, and operational technologies. eCrime 2025 will be the 20th annual peer-reviewed, publishing symposium hosted by APWG, this year focusing on AI and the growing menace of cyber-physical threats.
eCrime Venue: San Diego, California
Delegates’ Accommodations: Coronado Bay Resort
Click Here for APWG eCrime HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS
The IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Community on Security & Privacy Is Standing as Technical Sponsor of the APWG’s 2025 Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime 2025)
Click Here for Abstracts of 2025's Accepted Peer-Reviwed Papers
Programmed Sessions:
Monday, November 3/ Training Sessions for Cybercrime Interveners
12:00-12:30 PM / Room Assignment: Britannia
Can LLMs Outsmart Phishers? A Reality Check on AI Defenses
Aaron Escamilla, NetSTAR / ALPS System Integration Co., LTD
3:00-5:30 PM / Room Assignment: Britannia
How to Build Agentic Systems to Automate Web Security
Mohamed Nabeel, Palo Alto Networks
12:00-2:30 PM / Room Assignment: Cambria
Modeling for Anti-abuse: Threats, Risks, and Solutions
Laurin Weissinger, UC Berkeley
3:00-5:30 PM / Room Assignment: Cambria
TBA
Click Here for Abstracts of Training Sessions for eCrime 2025
APWG eCrime 2025 Monday Night Reception |
TUESDAY, November 4/ Introductions & eCrime 20th Year Review
| 9:15 | Panel: Charting the Evolutionary Arc of AI As Outlaw Operative & Cybercrime Watchman |
Moderator: Embrima N. Ceesay, Vice President of Infrastructure, Platform Automation & Data Science, Mastercard Dr. Saeed Abu Nimeh, Founder/CTO, Augur Security Zara Perumal, CTO/Co-Founder of Overwatch Data Cy Khormaee, Founder/CEO, AegisAI Security Kevin Tian, Founder/CEO, Doppel Fred Heiding, Post Doctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School |
| 10:45 | Coffee Break |
AI's Impact at the Cybercrime Frontier
| 11:15 | AI Will Increase the Quantity - and Quality - of Phishing Scams |
| Fred Heiding, Post Doctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School |
| 11:35 | AI-Enabled Phishing: Is the Sky Really Falling? |
| Crane Hassold, Principal Security Research Lead, Microsoft |
| 12:05 | AI-powered Spearphishing at Scale |
Cy Khormaee, Founder/CEO, AegisAI Security |
| 12:35 | AI Under Siege: Dissecting the ReAct Framework Attack Surface |
Aditya K Sood, VP of Security Engineering and AI Strategy, Aryaka
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| 1:00 | Lunch Break |
Mapping Cybercrime's Fraud Ecosystem
Moderator: Brad Wardman, Coinbase / APWG Board of Directors
| 2:00 | Phishing Landscape 2025: Phishing’s Gotten Worse, and Here’s Why |
| Greg Aaron, President, Illumintel, Inc. / APWG Senior Research Fellow / Associate, Interisle Consulting Group |
| 2:30 | Infrastructure Patterns in Toll Scam Domains: A Comprehensive Analysis of Cybercriminal Registration and Hosting Strategies |
| Morium Akter Munny (California State University San Marcos) |
| 2:50 | Wireless Data Exfiltration Using LoRa Devices |
IoT as Cybercrime Co-conspirator: Thompson Security Research |
| 3:20 | Outsmarting Crimebots: How Graph Analytics and Fingerprints Beat Static Rules |
Aaron Escamilla, Cyber Security Engineer NetSTAR / ALPS System Integration Co., LTD |
Grids, Infrastructure & Cybercrimes of Scale
Moderator: Laurin Weissinger, eCrime 2025 General Chair
| 3:50 | Inside China’s Power Grid Hacking Research |
Erika Langerová, Head of Cybersecurity Research České Vysoké Učení Technické V Praze Univerzitní Centrum Energeticky Efektivních Budov |
| 4:20 | BADBOX 2.0: The Largest Botnet of Infected CTV Devices Ever Uncovered |
VP, Threat Intelligence Gavin Reid, CISO HUMAN Security / Satori Threat Intelligence & Research Team |
| 4:50 | SAETI: State-Actor Empowered Threat,Intelligence... A Good or a Bad thing? |
Righard Zwienenberg, Senior Research Fellow, ESET Eddy Willems, Evangelist, WAVCi |
WEDNESDAY, November 5/ Day 2: Cybercrime Fighting in the AI Epoch
The New New Cybercrimes and Their Consequences
| 9:15 | Quantum-Enabled Cybercrime: A Portfolio Analysis of Cryptocurrency Theft and Double-Spending |
Zhen Li (Albion College) Qi Liao (Central Michigan University) |
| 10:05 | Unicorns in the Wild West: Empirical Analysis of Cybercrime Facilitated by Cryptocurrencies |
Tyler Moore, Arghya Mukherjee (The University of Tulsa) |
| 10:25 | Short Path to Phishing: Identifying Misused URL Shortening Services in the Wild |
Zul Odgerel (Université Grenoble Alpes / KOR Labs) Yevheniya Nosyk, Jan Bayer, Sourena Maroofi, Louis Bedeschi (KOR Labs) Andrzej Duda (Université Grenoble Alpes) Maciej Korczyński (Université Grenoble Alpes) |
| 10:45 | Coffee Break |
Isolating Cybercrime Signal in an Epoch of Pandemic Noise
| 11:30 | Lost in Translation: Analyzing Non-English Cybercrime Forums |
| Mariella Mischinger (IMDEA Networks and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| 11:50 | Detecting Malicious Domain Registration Batches: Patterns, Prevalence, and Security Implications |
| Sam Cheadle, Carlos Hernandez Ganan, Siôn Lloyd, Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob (ICANN) |
| 12:10 | SHADOWBOX: A Low-Artifact Framework for Analyzing Evasive Cyber Crimes |
| Javad Zandi, Lalchandra Rampersaud, Amin Kharraz (Florida International University) |
| 12:30 | Lunch Break |
Crimebot v. Robocop: Defensive AI at the Parapets
| 1:45 | "Send to which account?” Evaluation of an LLM-based Scambaiting System |
| Hossein Siadati (Cybera) |
| 2:05 | Defense of the Clones: Securing Web Applications with Automatic Honeypot Generation and Deployment |
| Billy Tsouvalas, Nick Nikiforakis (Stony Brook University) |
| 2:25 | Contextual Classification of Cybercriminal Posts Using Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Study on Tech Support Scam Marketplaces |
Raghavendra Cherupalli, Yi Ting Chua, Weiping Pei, Tyler Moore (University of Tulsa) Gary Warner (UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) |
| 2:45 | Family Ties: A Close Look at the Influence of Static Features on the Precision of Malware Family Clustering |
Antonino Vitale, Simone Aonzo, Davide Balzarotti (EURECOM) Kevin van Liebergen, Juan Caballero (IMDEA Software Institute) Savino Dambra (Gen Digital) Platon Kotzias (BforeAI) |
| 3:05 | ScanWars: (A Multi-network Approach to Detecting and Analyzing) The Rise of Scanning Activity |
Beliz Kaleli [corresponding author], Fang Liu, Oleksii Starov, Tony Li (Palo Alto Networks) Manuel Egele, Gianluca Stringhini (Boston University) |
THURSDAY, November 6/ Human Factors & Domestic Contexts
Moderator: Aimee Larsen-Kirkpatrick, President, STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Messaging Convention
| 8:30 | Child Identity Theft and Socially Engineered Attacks |
| Tracy (Kitten) Goldberg, Javelin Research |
| 9:15 | PANEL: Limits of User Security Burdens in a Pandemic of Nearly Imperceptible Falsity & Fraud |
| Moderator: TBA |
| 10:00 | Beaver: Estimating Future Risks at Scale in Real-World Deployments |
Jessica Balaquit, Marco Balduzzi, Roel Reyes, Ryan Flores (Trend Micro Research) |
| 10:20 | Royal Rumble: How QR Codes Tag-Team Human Psychology to Deliver the Perfect Attack |
Principal Product Marketing Manager, mimecast |
| 10:40 | Catch Me If You Scan: A Longitudinal Analysis of Stalkerware Evasion Tactics |
| Anahitha Vijay, Luis A. Saavedra, Alice Hutchings (University of Cambridge) |
| 11:00 | Department-Specific Security Awareness Campaigns: A Cross-Organizational Study of HR and Accounting |
Matthias Pfister, Irdin Pekaric (University of Liechtenstein) Giovanni Apruzzese (University of Liechtenstein, University of Reykjavik) |
| 11:20 | Just in Plain Sight: Unveiling CSAM Distribution Campaigns on the Clear Web |
Nikolaos Lykousas (Data Centric) Constantinos Patsakis (University of Piraeus) |
| 11:40 | Safeguarding Futures: Exploring the Impacts of Generative AI on Child Online Protection in Nepal |
Anil Raghuvanshi, ChildSafe.Net and UNICEF |
| 12:00 | Social Engineering / Second Edition |
Righard Zwienenberg, Senior Research Fellow, ESET Eddy Willems, Evangelist, WACCi |
| 12:30 | LUNCH BREAK |
| Trade Fair Opens / Posters on Display |
Mapping the Cybercrime Marketplace
| 1:30 | Uncovering the Trust Signals Supporting Telegram’s Cybercrime Economy |
Roy Ricaldi, Luca Allodi (Eindhoven University of Technology) Tina Marjanov, Alice Hutchings (University of Cambridge) |
| 1:50 | Is Ransomware an Economically Distinct Attack Type? An Event Study of Market Reactions |
Ambarish Gurjar, Dalyapraz Manatova, Benjamin Staples, Spencer Chambers, Jean Camp (Indiana University Bloomington) |
| 2:10 | COFFEE BREAK |
| Trade Fair Opens / Posters on Display |
Cybercriminal Finance & Crypto as Laundering Engine
| 2:55 | From Lamborghinis to Ladas: Empirical Analysis of LockBit's Business Operations |
| Ian Gray (New York University) |
| 3:15 | Inside LockBit: Technical, Behavioral, and Financial Anatomy of a Ransomware Empire |
| Felipe Castaño, Francesco Zola (Vicomtech), Constantinos Patsakis (University of Piraeus), Fran Casino (Rovira i Virgili University) |
| 3:35 | The Dark Art of Financial Disguise in Web3: Money Laundering Schemes and Countermeasures |
Hesam Sarkhosh Sarkendi, Uzma Maroof, Diogo Barradas (University of Waterloo) |
Important Dates (peer-review papers):
Notification of acceptance: September 5th – 9th, 2025
Conference: November 4 – 7, 2025
Camera-ready paper due: November 30th, 2025
The selected peer-reviewed papers will be presented at the eCrime symposium along with panels and talks in General Sessions from other researchers selected from industrial and academic research centers correspondent with the APWG.
General Information
eCrime sessions and proceedings are in English.
The San Diego venue and accommodation at Loews Coronado Bay can be inspected here: https://www.loewshotels.com/coronado-bay-resort/111025-ecrime-2025
Please contact the APWG eCrime organizers for any other details via email at apwg_events@apwg.org.
Discounts
Students requiring discounts should contact symposium managers at apwg_events@apwg.org
IEEE members and partners requiring discounts should contact symposium managers at apwg_events@apwg.org
Discount codes are also available for university researchers, government personnel and law enforcement professionals from pubic-sector agencies as well as for IEEE members.
Please contact the APWG eCrime organizers for details via email at: apwg_events@apwg.org.
Solicited Research Topics for APWG eCrime 2025
Since 2006, APWG eCrime has cast its call for papers in relevant research disciplines, focusing in large part on financial crimes that abuse Internet technologies and IT to victimize users, enterprises and their brands.
From 2025 forward, APWG eCrime is also specifically soliciting original research on cyber-physical systems and operational technologies abused in the furtherance of any crime: cyber (digital) or manifested in physical spaces, such as homes, enterprises, roadways, public spaces and critical infrastructure.
eCrime’s curators define these cybercrimes as those that exploit, disrupt, or manipulate cyber-physical systems or operational technologies — systems that integrate control, feedback, and communication mechanisms across digital, mechanical, and biological domains.
The selected peer-reviewed papers will be presented at the eCrime symposium along with panels and talks in General Sessions from other researchers selected from industrial and academic research centers correspondent with the APWG.
Alongside this expanded topic spectrum, eCrime 2025 is also soliciting papers that speak to the following topics and issues:
Economic foundations of: cybercrime cyber-physical crimes; and other abuses of IT for criminal enterprise
Behavioural and psychosocial aspects of cybercrime; and cyber-physical system victimization and prevention
Emerging technological exposures, vulnerabilities, and risks
Architectural vulnerabilities (of products, operational technologies, infrastructures and cyber-physical systems) that advantage criminal actors
New or improved techniques to detect and respond to cybercrime and cyber-physical crimes of all types
How to accurately measure and understand the health and resilience of systems, networks, infrastructures and users against cybercrime
Addressing challenges of cybercrime’s increasing complexity (e.g. digital infrastructures, crime-fighting/forensic techniques, and the structure of the crimes themselves)
Measuring and modelling of cybercrime/cyber-physical system crimes and related criminal enterprises for operational protection routines
Measuring and modelling of cybercrime/cyber-physical system crimes and related criminal enterprises for informing rational underwriting instrumentation developed by commercial insurers
Analysis and modelling of the cybercrime and abuse risk landscape
Cybercrime/cyber-physical system crime payload delivery strategies and countermeasures (e.g. spam, mobile apps, social engineering, etc.)
Application of public policy and law for the programmatic suppression of common cybercrimes; crimes against or involving cyber-physical systems and related abuses
Policy and legal challenges as they relate to actually developing and sustaining anti-cybercrime practices and policies
Cryptocurrency crimes and related cybercrimes, and the forensic tools and techniques required to measure, prevent, and counter these crimes
Case studies of current cybercrime/cyber-physical system attack methods (e.g. phishing, malware, rogue antivirus programs, pharming, ransomware, crimeware, botnets, and emerging techniques)
Detecting and preventing abuse of internet infrastructure to neutralize cybercrimes/cyber-physical system crimes and abuses
Detecting and isolating cybercriminal gangs and their money laundering routines and enterprises
Cybercrime’s evolution in specific verticals (e.g. financial services, e-commerce, health and energy, etc.)
Cybercriminal cloaking techniques, and counter-cloaking tools and approaches
Design and evaluation of UI/UXs to neutralize fraud and enhance user security and cybercrime awareness
Novel methods for measuring cybercrime and related abuses for development of defensive routines and programs
Guidance for Authors
Submit papers here: https://ecrime2025.hotcrp.com
eCrime has adopted the IEEE publication format. Submissions should be in English, in PDF format with all fonts embedded, and formatted using the IEEE conference template, which can be found at:
http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html.
Submissions must include author names and affiliations, but should otherwise be anonymized. Authors’ own work should be referred to in the third person.
Papers should not exceed 12 letter-sized pages, excluding the bibliography and appendices. Committee members are not required to read appendices, so ensure that the main paper is intelligible without them.
Submitted papers that do not adhere to all the above guidelines may be rejected without consideration of their merits.
Authors of accepted papers must register for the event and present in person. Remote presentations delivered live and/or pre-recorded presentations will be considered in limited circumstances (e.g. where the lead author presents remotely and a co-author attends in person).
Authors will be asked to indicate whether they would like their submissions to be considered for the Best Student Paper Award. Any paper co-authored by a full-time student is eligible for this award.
Authors of accepted papers must guarantee that their paper will be presented at the conference. APWG eCrime understands that some authors may face difficulties in obtaining funding to attend the conference. Therefore, a limited number of stipends are available for those who are unable to secure funding. Students who will present their accepted papers themselves will be given priority in receiving this assistance.
Call for Training Day Proposals
Are you an expert in a cybercrime research, cyber forensics or related investigation methods? Do you use a specialised resource/repository and want to show others how to use it too (or use it better)? Have you authored a new framework or modelling technique that you think more people should know about?
For the first time at eCrime 2025, APWG will feature a pre-conference eCrime Training Day for researchers and industry practitioners. Trainers will have the opportunity to discuss their areas of expertise with attendees on Monday, November 3, the day before the conference begins (on 4 November). These longer sessions are aimed at transferring skills and passing the torch to a new generation of researchers and practitioners.
Sessions could focus on a variety of relevant topics, such as:
How to collect, use, and analyse cybercrime data in investigations and/or research projects
How to investigate key data repositories, such as the DNS ecosystem, for research and investigations
New modelling methods for cyber threats, risks, and vulnerabilities
How to engage with policymakers as a cyber researcher or industry expert
An intro session for cybercrime researchers/investigators focusing on relevant security frameworks, standards, and best practices
Training session proposals should include:
Training session title
Trainer/artisan biographic description 3-6 sentences of direct relevance to topic space covered in the proposed session
Topic description of 3-6 sentences describing what the training session will cover and competencies it will cultivate
Audience: eCrime prefers sessions that any eCrime attendee could benefit from; however, please note if your session would especially benefit a specific audience (e.g. threat intelligence researcher)
Prerequisites: eCrime prefers training sessions that do not require any prerequisites; however, we may make an exception for a topic of particular merit or interest
Session length minimum of 1 hour, maximum of 3 hours. Please also indicate whether your session
length is strict (i.e. if we receive many session proposals, or if a trainer drops out, would you be able to make your session longer or shorter)
Include all the information above in a Word or PDF document and upload to https://ecrime2025.hotcrp.com and title your submission with “PROPOSAL” followed by your session title (for example “PROPOSAL Using the OWASP model in SMEs”.)
A maximum of 4 training sessions will be offered.
Important Dates (eCrime Training Day proposals)
Deadline for Proposals: June 15th 2025
Notification of Acceptance: August 30th, 2025
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Anticipated time for each training session: 1 to 3 hours, with a preference for longer, in-depth sessions. If there is sufficient interest, we will consider running parallel sessions.
Conference Sponsorship Opportunities
Sponsorship opportunities for APWG members and third parties are available here:
https://apwg.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/APWG_eCrime2025_SAN_DIEGO_Sponsorship_Memo-1.pdf
