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 part of the International Secure Systems Lab and the iDRAMA Lab, I am an affiliated faculty in the Computer Science Department at BU, a Junior Faculty Fellow at the Hariri Institute for Computing, and a visiting faculty in the Information Security Group at UCL.

I was awarded an NSF CAREER Award in 2020, a Facebook Secure the Internet Grant in 2018, a UCL BEAMS Future Leaders in Engineering and Physical Sciences Award in 2016, a Google Research Award in 2015, the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Department of Computer Science at UCSB in 2014, and a Symantec Research Labs Graduate Fellowship in 2012.

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, (some) qualitative analysis, machine learning, crime science, and systems design.

As examples, recently I have been investigating the spread of alternative news and memes on online social networks, raids organized by trolls against other Internet users, cyberbullying, ransomware, online dating scams, money laundering schemes linked to cybercrime, malware delivery networks, and online social network compromises.

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

SELECTED MEDIA COVERAGE

RECENT SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

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.

Tiresias: Predicting Security Events Through Deep Learning

Yun Shen, Enrico Mariconti, Pierre-Antoine Verver, and Gianluca Stringhini. CCS, 2018.

On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities

Savvas Zannettou, Tristan Caulfield, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil. IMC, 2018.

Movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Exploring Illegal Streaming Cyberlockers

Damilola Ibosiola, Benjamin Steer, Alvaro Garcia-Recuero, Gianluca Stringhini, Steve Uhlig, and Gareth Tyson. ICWSM, 2018.

Understanding Web Archiving Services and Their (Mis)Use on Social Media

Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Michael Sirivianos, and Gianluca Stringhini. ICWSM, 2018.

You are your Metadata: Identification and Obfuscation of Social Media Users using Metadata Information

Beatrice Perez, Mirco Musolesi, and Gianluca Stringhini. ICWSM, 2018.

The Web Centipede: Understanding How Web Communities Influence Each Other Through the Lens of Mainstream and Alternative News Sources

Savvas Zannettou, Tristan Caulfield, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Nicolas Kourtellis, Ilias Leontiadis, Michael Sirivianos, Gianuca Stringhini, and Jeremy Blackburn. IMC, 2017.

POISED: Spotting Twitter Spam Off the Beaten Paths

Shirin Nilizadeh, Francois Labreche, Alireza Sadighian, Jose Fernandez, Christopher Kruegel, Gianluca Stringhini, and Giovanni Vigna. CCS, 2017.

Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump: A Measurement Study of 4chan's Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effects on the Web

Gabriel Emile Hine, Jeremiah Onaolapo, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Nicolas Kourtellis, Ilias Leontiadis, Riginos Samaras, Gianluca Stringhini, and Jeremy Blackburn. ICWSM, 2017.

PayBreak: Defense against cryptographic ransomware

Eugene Kolodenker, William Koch, Gianluca Stringhini, and Manuel Egele. ASIACCS, 2017.

What's in a Name? Understanding Profile Name Reuse on Twitter

Enrico Mariconti, Jeremiah Onaolapo, Syed Sharique Ahmad, Nicolas Nikiforou, Manuel Egele, Nick Nikiforakis, and Gianluca Stringhini. WWW, 2017.

MaMaDroid: Detecting Android Malware by Building Markov Chains of Behavioral Models

Enrico Mariconti, Lucky Onwuzurike, Panagiotis Andriotis, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gordon Ross, and Gianluca Stringhini. NDSS, 2017.

What Happens After You Are Pwnd: Understanding The Use of Leaked Webmail Credentials In The Wild

Jeremiah Onaolapo, Enrico Mariconti, and Gianluca Stringhini. IMC, 2016.