Chris Kanich
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in the UC San Diego Department of Computer Science and Engineering, studying in the Systems and Networking Group under Geoffrey M. Voelker and Stefan Savage.

Contact information:

In person:
room 3140, Computer Science and Engineering (EBU3B)

Snail mail:
9500 Gilman Drive, M/C 0404
La Jolla, CA 92093-0404

Phone: 858-822-5647

Email: ckanich@cs.ucsd.edu

Research interests
My research interests are rooted in computer security but branch out into systems and networks, measurement, and social networks. My main body of work at UC San Diego has focused on the economics of shady Internet activities. This includes creating a botnet infiltration-based methodology for measuring spam conversion rates, mapping out the business processes of unsolicited product advertisement spam, and estimating the gross revenue of the entire product spamming ecosystem. My current work also includes measuring the returns attackers can expect from malware, phishing, and social engineering attacks on Internet users.
Selected media coverage
Show Me the Money in The Economist, Oct 15th 2011
Click Trajectories in The New York Times (and the editorial), May 2011
Spamalytics in Wired magazine, March 2011
Selected publications

A CV can be found here. You can also read statements of my research and teaching interests here.

At IMC '11:
GQ: Practical Containment for Measuring Modern Malware Systems Christian Kreibich, Nicholas Weaver, Chris Kanich, Weidong Cui, and Vern Paxson. PDF

At USENIX Security '11:
Show Me the Money: Characterizing Spam-advertised Revenue Chris Kanich, Nicholas Weaver, Damon McCoy, Tristan Halvorson, Christian Kreibich, Kirill Levchenko, Vern Paxson, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. PDF

At WOOT '11:
Putting Out a HIT: Crowdsourcing Malware Installs Chris Kanich, Stephen Checkoway, and Keaton Mowery. PDF

At CSET '11:
No Plan Survives Contact: Experience with Cybercrime Measurement Chris Kanich, Neha Chachra, Damon McCoy, Chris Grier, David Wang, Marti Motoyama, Kirill Levchenko, Stefan Savage, and Geoffrey M. Voelker.PDF

At IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2011:
Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain Kirill Levchenko, Andreas Pitsillidis, Neha Chachra, Brandon Enright, Mark Felegyhazi, Chris Grier, Tristan Halvorson, Chris Kanich, Christian Kreibich, He Liu, Damon McCoy, Nicholas Weaver, Vern Paxson, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. PDF web

At USENIX Security '10:
Re: CAPTCHAs -- Understanding CAPTCHA Solving from an Economic Context Marti Motoyama, Kirill Levchenko, Chris Kanich, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. PDF

At NDSS '10:
Botnet Judo: Fighting Spam with Itself Andreas Pitsillidis, Kirill Levchenko, Christian Kreibich, Chris Kanich, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Vern Paxson, Nicholas Weaver, and Stefan Savage. PDF

At CCS '08:
Spamalytics: an Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion Chris Kanich, Christian Kreibich, Kirill Levchenko, Brandon Enright, Vern Paxson, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. PDF web

Full publication list.

Teaching

CSE 123, Summer Session I, 2011.

CSE 127, Spring 2011. Teaching assistant for Hovav Shacham

CSE 123, Fall 2010. Teaching assistant for Alex Snoeren (co-TA with Marti Motoyama)

CS 180, Ancient times (2002-2005). Lab TA.

Concise history
Before my California transplant, I spent a majority of my life in Ogden Dunes, Indiana, on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan. I attended Purdue University where I majored in Mathematics and Computer Science. Outside of classwork, I conducted research under Sonia Fahmy and Cristina Nita-Rotaru.
Beyond my technical classes, I spent a large amount of time studying written and spoken Chinese, an endeavor which culminated in a summer abroad in Beijing, China.