Cybercrime Summer School

The 9th Strathclyde International Perspectives on Cybercrime Summer School will run 24th-28th August 2026 at the University of Strathclyde with a research symposium on Monday 24th August. Registration closed on 7th August. Students (PhD, MSc, UG), practitioners, and academics were welcome to register. We had sponsored places available from RISCS and SIPR. SPRITE+ sponsored 5 places and travel costs for UK PhD students. We are also grateful to CRANE for sponsoring travel costs for early career researcher speakers to attend.

The interdisciplinary summer school is jointly organised by the University of Strathclyde, Scotland; Simon Fraser University, Canada; OTH Amberg-Weiden, Germany; OTH Regensburg, Germany; and HAW Kiel, Germany. Organisers: Daniel R. Thomas, Frazer Sandison, George Weir, Richard Frank, Patrick Levi, Sebastian Fischer, Andreas Aßmuth, Jide Edu, Ali Farooq, and Lindah Sawe.

Details of the 8th edition in 2025 and 7th edition in 2024 are still available.

2026 sponsors

SPRITE+ Security, Privacy, Identity, Trust, Engagement, NetworkPlus logo

RISCS Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security logo

SIPR | Scottish Institute for Policing Research (logo)

Text: CRANE strenghtening the Cyber Security research community. With logo showing a stylised crane bird with some digital circut board wires trailing through its wings

Information for participants

Attendees of the summer school should bring their own laptops with them for the practical sessions. The schedule is below, subject to change without notice.

  Start Length Session Theme Topic Speaker
Monday research symposium August 24th 2026
 9:00 30 Registration      
9:30 5
Session 1.1
   Introduction Daniel Thomas (University of Strathclyde)
9:35 30 AI security From Alert to Patch: The Hard Parts of Automating Vulnerability Repair with LLMs Mohsen Iranmanesh (Simon Fraser University)
10:05 30 Cybercrime Understanding Wrench Attacks: When Cryptocurrency Crime Becomes Physical Marilyne Ordekian (University College London)
10:35 20 Break      
10:55 30
Session 1.2
  
Keynote from CROSS-SEC conference
Andreas Aßmuth (HAW Kiel)
11:25 30  
11:55 30   TBC Ali Farooq (University of Strathclyde)
12:25 50 Lunch      
13:15 30
Session 1.3
 Risk Cybercrime Risks, Trust and Accountability in Digital Healthcare Systems Elif Calik (University of Galway)
13:45 30 Cybercrime Reevaluating the State/Cybercrime Nexus: Technological Affordances in the Russian and Chinese Cybercrime Ecosystems Joe Burton (Lancaster University)
14:15 30 Phishing Mapping the fake follower market and its implications for phishing Rebecca Owens (Durham University) and Maksim Kalameyets (Newcastle University)
14:45 20 Break      
15:05 30
Session 1.4
 Phishing Human-Centric Exploration of Sophisticated Phishing Attacks in Organisations Neeranjan Chitare (Birmingham City University)
15:35 30   Panel discussion Marilyne Ordekian (University College London), Elif Calik (University of Galway), Joe Burton (Lancaster University),
Rebecca Owens (Durham University), Neeranjan Chitare (Birmingham City University)
16:05   End      
Confirmed   Evening social   City Chambers visit  
Tuesday summer school August 25th, 2026
 9:30 15
Session 2.1
   Introductions Daniel, George and Richard
9:45 45   TBC Tom Murdoch (University of Strathclyde)
10:30 45   TBC Mandeep Pannu
11:15 20 Break      
11:35 45
Session 2.2
Phishing
Phishing Workshop - Design
Andreas Aßmuth (HAW Kiel) and Richard Frank (Simon Fraser University)
12:20 45
13:05 50 Lunch      
13:55 45
Session 2.3
Phishing
Phishing Workshop - Implementation
Andreas Aßmuth (HAW Kiel) and Richard Frank (Simon Fraser University)
14:40 45
15:25 20 Break      
15:45 30 Session 2.4 Phishing Phishing Workshop - Presentations Andreas Aßmuth (HAW Kiel) and Richard Frank (Simon Fraser University)
16:15   End      
Wednesday summer school August 26th 2026
 9:30 45
Session 3.1
 Protecting information Cumulative Revelations in Personal Data: some methodological insights Emma Nicol (University of Strathclyde)
10:15 45 Deepfake Deepfakes Emmet Robins (Simon Fraser University)
11:00 20 Break      
11:20 45
Session 3.2
Risk
Daniel Thomas (University of Strathclyde)
12:05 45
12:50 50 Lunch      
13:40 45
Session 3.3
 Hacking Communities Self and social identity in hacking communities John McAlaney (University of Bournemouth)
14:25 45 Phishing Evolution of phishing and now smishing Marie Vasek (University College London)
15:10 20 Break      
15:30 30 Session 3.4   Panel Discussion Emmet Robins (Simon Fraser University), John McAlaney (University of Bournemouth), Marie Vasek (University College London)
16:00   End      
Thursday summer school August 27th 2026
 9:30 30
Session 4.1
Protecting information
 Manipulation, Legislation, and Tessellation Michael Whitehead (University of Strathclyde / University of Leeds)
10:00 30 A comparative Analysis of Authentication Security in UK Local Government Martin Collier (University of Strathclyde / NovaBytes)
10:30 20 Break      
10:50 45
Session 4.2
Secure programming
Workshop: Why you should learn Rust programming
Jeremy Singer (University of Glasgow)
11:35 45
12:20 50 Lunch      
13:10 45 Session 4.3 Privacy Privacy and anonymity on the Internet George Weir (University of Strathclyde)
13:55 20 Break      
14:15 45  
Authentication, Privacy
Ross Horne (University of Strathclyde)
15:00 45 Session 4.4
15:45   End      
Friday summer school August 28th 2026
 9:30 30
Session 5.1
 Networks Network Foundation Models for unsupervised Intrusion Detection Darren Fürst (OTH AW)
10:00 30 Cyber careers Cracking the code: why young women start and continue with ethical hacking Jessica Saridakis (University of Strathclyde / Morgan Stanley)
10:30 20 Break      
10:50 45
Session 5.2
Cybercrime
 How to get away with cybercrime
Basil Manoussos (Strathclyde Forensics)
11:35 45 Digital Evidence in the times of Artificial Intelligence
12:20 50 Lunch      
13:10 45
Session 5.3
 OSINT
Data Detectives: The OSINT Workshop
Jamie O'Hare (University of Abertay)
13:55 45  
14:40 20 Break      
15:00 45 Session 5.4   Closing panel discussion Darren Fürst (OTH AW),
Jamie O'Hare (University of Abertay), Daniel Thomas (University of Strathclyde)
15:45   End