PhD student position in Mapping Anonymous TOR Networks

Cybersecurity Group

Deadline for receipt of applications: October 12, 2022 23:59 AoE (13 October 2022, 13:59h Europe/Madrid Time)

IMDEA Networks Institute invites applications for research assistants in the area of cybersecurity, with the prospect of becoming Ph.D students. The selected candidate will become a member of the Cybersecurity group led by Dr. Guillermo Suarez-Tangil.

The candidate will conduct cutting-edge research in the area of cybersecurity and network measurements, with a focus on developing advanced mechanisms to characterize abusive or illicit services the Darknet.

Underground markets and other illicit services advertise in the Darknet play a key role in the proliferation of cybercrime. Users with few technical skills can easily acquire services and tools in the darknet to set up their own criminal operations. An example is illicit crypto-mining campaigns, that use botnets rented in such markets to leverage stolen resources and covertly mine 4.4% of the entire Monero in circulation (circa 58 million USD) [1]. Profits generated by these campaigns introduce massive incomes to cyber-criminals. These incomes fuel the underground economy and gear other cyber-criminal activities. More importantly, these threats generally cause important economical loses to victims.

The role holder will require web crawling skills to scrape content over the TOR network. The project will create advanced ways to search for and analyze sites hosted in TOR (i.e., .onion sites), by designing and implementing systematic mechanisms to identify content hosted in TOR.

[1] A First Look at the Crypto-Mining Malware Ecosystem: A Decade of Unrestricted Wealth. Sergio Pastrana and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC). Oct 21-23, 2019. Amsterdam, Netherlands

The position offers:

• The prospect to publish at top-tier venues
• The opportunity to work in a thrilling and international environment
• The possibility to enroll in a Ph.D. program and continue

The position requires:

• A degree in Computer Science or a related field like Engineering, with a solid academic record
• Deep knowledge of crawling, python programming, and machine learning and be acquainted with the TOR environment.
• Strong background in cybersecurity
• Programming skills.
• Proficiency in English.

Contract Duration and Type:

• Initially 2 years, with the prospect of transitioning to a Ph.D position up to 4 years in total.
• Candidates must be aged between 16 and 30 and be enrolled as job seekers in the Spanish Employment Offices at the moment the contract is signed.
• Competitive salary. Candidate’s experience will be considered.
• Full-time contract. Includes social and health benefits.

To apply, please send your CV in English and your academic transcript to recruitmentinvestigo@imdea.org indicating “CG-TOR” in the subject line.

Candidates must be aged between 16 and 30 and be enrolled as job seekers in the Spanish Employment Offices at the moment the contract is signed.

The evaluation of candidates CVs for this position will strictly follow a blind recruitment process, guaranteeing the principle of non-discrimination by any reason. All the documents submitted to the recruitment process will be dully anonymized.

Funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU and the Ministry of Employment and Social Economy of Spain through the Spanish Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, in the framework of “Programa Investigo” call.