Research Highlights Throughout the Years:
Finding Weak Points in the Spam Economy
A team led by CNS researchers devised a methodology for the empirical study and analysis of the end-to-end resource dependencies that support the spam economy, from advertising to click through to payment and fulfillment. Having profiled the infrastructure, the researchers then analyzed it for potential weaknesses and evaluated possible interventions for their effectiveness and for the breadth of their impact. It is the least studied and understood portion of the spam pipeline, the financial segment, which appears to be the most vulnerable to defense against the entire system.
Research paper presented at IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in 2011: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu//~savage/papers/Oakland11.pdf
NY Times Article “Study Sees Way to Win Spam Fight”: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20spam.html
“Interview with Stefan Savage On the Spam Payment Trail” by Rik Farrow: http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~savage/papers/LoginInterview11.pdf
Madisonian Article “S is for Security; S is for Spam; S is for Stefan Savage” summarizing Savage’s interview with Rick Farrow: http://madisonian.net/2011/11/09/s-is-for-security-s-is-for-spam-s-is-for-stefan-savage/