1. Introduction

The darknet is a portion of the Internet that limits the ability to track users’ identity. The Onion Routing (Tor) system provides hidden services for hosting the .onion darknet websites. Other platforms include I2P and freenet. While these platforms protect the freedom and privacy, they become the hotbeds of darknet crimes especially after Bitcoin appears. Since both Tor and Bitcoin hide users’ identity, performing crimes in darknet has minimal risks.

Numerous illicit darknet websites are created and facilitating criminal activities. For example, cryptomarkets have facilitated illicit product trading and transformed the methods used for illicit product transactions. Using this system has made buying illicit products online as easy as an Amazon purchase. Payments are made using Bitcoin and products are delivered to a pick-up address or to an email address. The proliferation of illicit darknet websites is an increasingly menacing threat to the national and global security.

Even the darknet keep users anonymized, the distributed nature allows us to easily obtain lots of anonymized public data. Examples data sources include ads and ratings in cryptomarkets, discussion posts in darknet forums, public ledgers and P2P network traffic packets in cryptocurrency, and Tor network traffic packets. This big darknet data creates new opportunities and challenges for understanding criminal activities, which can lead to disruption.

This workshop aims to draw the attention of big data researchers to this new research domain and bring multidiscipline researchers together to generate new methods and systems to gather intelligence from the darknet and eventually lead to disruption.

2. Research topics (not limited to):

• Search engine for searching new .onion sites
• Darknet website scrapers/parsers and database design
• Cryptomarket websites data analysis including product description, vendor profiles, and ratings
• Knowledge based construction tailed for darknet ads
• Fingerprints from text, image, traffic packets, and transactions and can link darknet users and/or clearnet users in social platforms
• Network analysis in darknet including community detection, information infusion and influence analysis
• Dynamic multilayer network analysis in darknet
• Cryptocurrency public ledger analysis
• Fraud and illicit transaction detection in cryptocurrencies
• Mixing services and its role in darknet crimes
• Similarity and difference between financial activities in darknet and clearnet commercial markets
• Similarity and difference between social behaviors/networks in darknet and clearnet social platforms/forums
• Tor network traffic packet analysis and how to use it to track criminals
• Bitcoin network traffic packet analysis and how to use it to link bitcoin addresses with computers
• Forensics that can be extracted from darknet data
• Analyzing the data collected from I2P or Freenet that can be used for combating darknet crimes
• Operations that can disrupt the illicit supply chains
• Application domains include any cyber crimes and any products that are being sold in darknet. Examples include human trafficking, opioids or any other kinds of drugs, financial fraud, and cybersecurity.

3. Important Dates:

• Oct 1, 2019: Due date for full workshop papers submission
• Nov 1, 2019: Notification of paper acceptance to authors
• Nov 15, 2019: Camera-ready of accepted papers
• Dec 9 (Day 1) or 12 (Day 4), 2019: The First International Workshop on Big Data Against Darknet Crimes 2019

4. Paper Submission:

The authors are invited to submit: full-length papers (up to 10 page IEEE 2-column format), short papers (up to 6 page IEEE 2-column format) or abstract papers (up to 3 page IEEE 2-column format) through the online submission system.

Paper Submission PagePapers should be formatted to IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Manuscript Formatting Guidelines (see link to “formatting instructions” below).

Formatting Instructions

5. Program Chair:

• Yubao Wu (Department of Computer Science, Georgia State University, [email protected])

6. Program Committee:

• TBD

7. Keynote Speakers:

• TBD