69 citations · 270 across the 24 of their papers we have counts for
27 papers
A Data-Driven Analysis of Infostealer Malware Victims
Arttu Paju, Juha Nurmi, David Arroyo +7
Infostealer malware infects devices worldwide and harvests their most sensitive contents: credentials, browser sessions, private keys, and access certificates. Yet its impact on vi…
Exploring the connection between coding habits and cognitive styles in malware developers
Vasilis Vouvoutsis, Constantinos Patsakis, Fran Casino
Malware research primarily studies the results, the methods, and the impact. Even from an offensive security perspective, what is examined is the method, not the development strate…
Analysing Multidisciplinary Approaches to Fight Large-Scale Digital Influence Operations
David Arroyo, Rafael Mata Milla, Marc Almeida Ros +4
Crime as a Service (CaaS) has evolved from isolated criminal incidents to a broad spectrum of illicit activities, including social media manipulation, foreign information manipulat…
Inside LockBit: Technical, Behavioral, and Financial Anatomy of a Ransomware Empire
Felipe Castaño, Constantinos Patsakis, Francesco Zola +1
LockBit has evolved from an obscure Ransomware-as-a-Service newcomer in 2019 to the most prolific ransomware franchise of 2024. Leveraging a recently leaked MySQL dump of the gang'…
The potential of LLM-generated reports in DevSecOps
Nikolaos Lykousas, Vasileios Argyropoulos, Fran Casino
Alert fatigue is a common issue faced by software teams using the DevSecOps paradigm. The overwhelming number of warnings and alerts generated by security and code scanning tools,…
Outside the Comfort Zone: Analysing LLM Capabilities in Software Vulnerability Detection
Yuejun Guo, Constantinos Patsakis, Qiang Hu +2
The significant increase in software production driven by automation and faster development lifecycles has resulted in a corresponding surge in software vulnerabilities. In paralle…
The Malware as a Service ecosystem
Constantinos Patsakis, David Arroyo, Fran Casino
The goal of this chapter is to illuminate the operational frameworks, key actors, and significant cybersecurity implications of the Malware as a Service (MaaS) ecosystem. Highlight…
Assessing LLMs in Malicious Code Deobfuscation of Real-world Malware Campaigns
Constantinos Patsakis, Fran Casino, Nikolaos Lykousas
The integration of large language models (LLMs) into various pipelines is increasingly widespread, effectively automating many manual tasks and often surpassing human capabilities.…
CBDC-AquaSphere: Interoperable Central Bank Digital Currency Built on Trusted Computing and Blockchain
Ivan Homoliak, Martin Perešíni, Patrik Holop +2
The adoption of decentralized, tamper-proof ledger systems is paving the way for new applications and opportunities in different contexts. While most research aims to improve their…
SoK: Cross-border Criminal Investigations and Digital Evidence
Fran Casino, Claudia Pina, Pablo López-Aguilar +3
Digital evidence underpin the majority of crimes as their analysis is an integral part of almost every criminal investigation. Even if we temporarily disregard the numerous challen…
On the Effectiveness of Binary Emulation in Malware Classification
Vasilis Vouvoutsis, Fran Casino, Constantinos Patsakis
Malware authors are continuously evolving their code base to include counter-analysis methods that can significantly hinder their detection and blocking. While the execution of mal…
Research trends, challenges, and emerging topics of digital forensics: A review of reviews
Fran Casino, Tom Dasaklis, Georgios Spathoulas +6
Due to its critical role in cybersecurity, digital forensics has received significant attention from researchers and practitioners alike. The ever increasing sophistication of mode…
The Cynicism of Modern Cybercrime: Automating the Analysis of Surface Web Marketplaces
Nikolaos Lykousas, Vasilios Koutsokostas, Fran Casino +1
Cybercrime is continuously growing in numbers and becoming more sophisticated. Currently, there are various monetisation and money laundering methods, creating a huge, underground…
EtherClue: Digital investigation of attacks on Ethereum smart contracts
Simon Joseph Aquilina, Fran Casino, Mark Vella +2
Programming errors in Ethereum smart contracts can result in catastrophic financial losses from stolen cryptocurrency. While vulnerability detectors can prevent vulnerable contract…
Analysis and Correlation of Visual Evidence in Campaigns of Malicious Office Documents
Fran Casino, Nikolaos Totosis, Theodoros Apostolopoulos +2
Many malware campaigns use Microsoft (MS) Office documents as droppers to download and execute their malicious payload. Such campaigns often use these documents because MS Office i…
Inside the x-rated world of "premium" social media accounts
Nikolaos Lykousas, Fran Casino, Constantinos Patsakis
During the last few years, there has been an upsurge of social media influencers who are part of the adult entertainment industry, referred to as Performers. To monetize their onli…
A blockchain-based Forensic Model for Financial Crime Investigation: The Embezzlement Scenario
Lamprini Zarpala, Fran Casino
The financial crime landscape is evolving along with the digitization in financial services. In this context, laws and regulations cannot efficiently cope with a fast-moving indust…
Intercepting Hail Hydra: Real-Time Detection of Algorithmically Generated Domains
Fran Casino, Nikolaos Lykousas, Ivan Homoliak +2
A crucial technical challenge for cybercriminals is to keep control over the potentially millions of infected devices that build up their botnets, without compromising the robustne…
SoK: Blockchain Solutions for Forensics
Thomas K. Dasaklis, Fran Casino, Constantinos Patsakis
As the digitization of information-intensive processes gains momentum in nowadays, the concern is growing about how to deal with the ever-growing problem of cybercrime. To this end…
A traceability and auditing framework for electronic equipment reverse logistics based on blockchain: the case of mobile phones
Thomas K. Dasaklis, Fran Casino, Constantinos Patsakis
Human beings produce electronic waste (e-waste) at an unprecedented pace. Mobile phones and other inter-connected smart devices make a significant contribution to the generation of…
Unravelling Ariadne's Thread: Exploring the Threats of Decentalised DNS
Constantinos Patsakis, Fran Casino, Nikolaos Lykousas +1
The current landscape of the core Internet technologies shows considerable centralisation with the big tech companies controlling the vast majority of traffic and services. This ha…
Exploiting Statistical and Structural Features for the Detection of Domain Generation Algorithms
Constantinos Patsakis, Fran Casino
Nowadays, malware campaigns have reached a high level of sophistication, thanks to the use of cryptography and covert communication channels over traditional protocols and services…
Encrypted and Covert DNS Queries for Botnets: Challenges and Countermeasures
Constantinos Patsakis, Fran Casino, Vasilios Katos
There is a continuous increase in the sophistication that modern malware exercise in order to bypass the deployed security mechanisms. A typical approach to evade the identificatio…
Blockchain Mutability: Challenges and Proposed Solutions
Eugenia Politou, Fran Casino, Efthimios Alepis +1
Blockchain's evolution during the past decade is astonishing: from bitcoin to over 2.000 altcoins, and from decentralised electronic payments to transactions programmable by smart…