ABOUT ME

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University, where I co-direct the Security Lab (SeclaBU). Between 2014 and 2018 I was faculty in the Departments of Computer Science and Security and Crime Science at University College London (UCL). I am affiliated with the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, the Computer Science Department, the Center for Antiracist Research, and the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research at BU. I am also a founding member of the iDRAMA Lab and a Junior Faculty Fellow at the Hariri Institute for Computing.

MY RESEARCH

In my research I apply a data-driven approach to better understand malicious activity on the Internet. Through the collection and analysis of large-scale datasets, I develop novel and robust mitigation techniques to make the Internet a safer place. My research involves a mix of quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, machine learning, crime science, and systems design.

My research is supported by the NSF, Google, and Facebook.

RECENT SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

TrollMagnifier: Detecting State-Sponsored Troll Accounts on Reddit

Mohammad Hammas Saeed, Shiza Ali, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Savvas Zannettou, and Gianluca Stringhini. OAKLAND, 2022.

A Large-scale Temporal Measurement of Android Malicious Apps: Persistence, Migration, and Lessons Learned

Yun Shen, Pierre-Antoine Vervier, and Gianluca Stringhini. USENIX Security, 2022.

Understanding the Digital Lives of Youth: Analyzing Media Shared within Safe versus Unsafe Private Conversations on Instagram

Shiza Ali, Afsaneh Razi, Seunghyun Kim, Ashwaq Alsoubai, Joshua Gracie, Munmun De Choudhury, Pamela Wisniewski, Gianluca Stringhini. CHI, 2022.

"It is just a flu": Assessing the Effect of Watch History on YouTube's Pseudoscientific Video Recommendations

Kostantinos Papadamou, Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, and Michael Sirivianos. ICWSM 2022.

The Gospel According to Q: Understanding the QAnon Conspiracy from the Perspective of Canonical Information

Max Aliapoulios, Antonis Papasavva, Cameron Ballard, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, Savvas Zannettou, and Jeremy Blackburn. ICWSM, 2022.

Does Platform Migration Compromise Content Moderation? Evidence from r/The_Donald and r/Incels

Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Shagun Jhaver, Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, and Robert West. CSCW, 2021.

“I’m a Professor, which isn’t usually a dangerous job”: Internet-Facilitated Harassment and its Impact on Researchers

Periwinkle Doerfler, Andrea Forte, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Jeremy Blackburn, Gianluca Stringhini, and Damon McCoy. CSCW, 2021.

SocialHEISTing: Understanding Stolen Facebook Accounts

Jeremiah Onaolapo, Nektarios Leontiadis, Despoina Magka, and Gianluca Stringhini. USENIX Security, 2021.

Dissecting the Meme Magic: Understanding Indicators of Virality in Image Memes

Chen Ling, Ihab AbuHilal, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Savvas Zannettou, and Gianluca Stringhini. CSCW, 2021.

A First Look at Zoombombing

Chen Ling, Utkucan Balci, Jeremy Blackburn, and Gianluca Stringhini. OAKLAND, 2021.

"Go eat a bat, Chang!": An Early Look on the Emergence of Sinophobic Behavior on Web Communities in the Face of COVID-19

Fatemeh Tahmasbi, Leonard Schild, Chen Ling, Jeremy Blackburn, Gianluca Stringhini, Yang Zhang, and Savvas Zannettou. WWW, 2021.

"Is it a Qoincidence?": A First Step Towards Understanding and Characterizing the QAnon Movement on Voat.co

Antonis Papasavva, Jeremy Blackburn, Gianluca Stringhini, Savvas Zannettou, and Emiliano De Cristofaro. WWW, 2021.

To Err.Is Human: Characterizing the Threat of Unintended URLs in Social Media

Beliz Kaleli, Brian Kondracki, Manuel Egele, Nick Nikiforakis, and Gianluca Stringhini. NDSS, 2021.

Understanding the Use of Fauxtography on Social Media

Yuping Wang, Fatemeh Tahmasbi, Jeremy Blackburn, Barry Bradlyn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, David Magerman, Savvas Zannettou, and Gianluca Stringhini. ICWSM, 2021.

SoK: Hate, Harassment, and the Changing Landscape of Online Abuse

Kurt Thomas, Devdatta Akhawe, Michael Bailey, Dan Boneh, Elie Bursztein, Sunny Consolvo, Nicola Dell, Zakir Durumeric, Patrick Gage Kelley, Deepak Kumar, Damon McCoy, Sarah Meiklejohn, Thomas Ristenpart, and Gianluca Stringhini. OAKLAND, 2021.

Understanding Worldwide Private Information Collection on Android

Yun Shen, Pierre-Antoine Vervier, and Gianluca Stringhini. NDSS, 2021.

The Evolution of the Manosphere Across the Web

Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Jeremy Blackburn, Barry Bradlyn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, Summer Long, Stephanie Greenberg, Savvas Zannettou. ICWSM, 2021.

Characterizing the Use of Images by State-Sponsored Troll Accounts on Twitter

Savvas Zannettou, Barry Bradlyn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, and Jeremy Blackburn. ICWSM, 2020.

Disturbed YouTube for Kids: Characterizing and Detecting Inappropriate Videos Targeting Young Children

Konstantinos Papadamou, Antonis Papasavva, Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn, Nicolas Kourtellis, Ilias Leontiadis, Gianluca Stringhini, and Michael Sirivianos. ICWSM, 2020.

“You Know What to Do”: Proactive Detection of YouTube Videos Targeted by Coordinated Hate Attacks

Enrico Mariconti, Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Nicolas Kourtellis, Ilias Leontiadis, Jordi Lugue Serrano, and Gianluca Stringhini. CSCW, 2019.

attack2vec: Leveraging Temporal Word Embeddings to Understand the Evolution of Cyberattacks

Yun Shen and Gianluca Stringhini. USENIX Security, 2019.

Pythia: a Framework for the Automated Analysis of Web Hosting Environments

Srdjan Matic, Gareth Tyson, and Gianluca Stringhini. WWW, 2019.

Who Watches the Watchmen: Exploring Complaints on the Web

Damilola Ibosiola, Ignacio Castro, Gianluca Stringhini, Steve Uhlig, and Gareth Tyson. WWW, 2019.