Christopher Abad is an American

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

, museum curator, artist, network engineer and

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

. He is best known for his qualitative analysis of specialization stratification in the underground economies related to

computer crime Cybercrime encompasses a wide range of criminal activities that are carried out using digital devices and/or networks. It has been variously defined as "a crime committed on a computer network, especially the Internet"; Cybercriminals may exp ...

Academic publication and mainstream news coverage

While at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

, Abad discovered a method by which collisions in the

hash function A hash function is any Function (mathematics), function that can be used to map data (computing), data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values, though there are some hash functions that support variable-length output. The values returned by a ...

used in

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. IP ...

datagrams may be leveraged to enable

covert Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret. Secrecy is often controver ...

channel communications. His discovery was a centerpiece of covert communications methodology and was the primary citation for an

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

paper on covert channel detection and another on a similar technique using TCP

timestamp A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolu ...

s, the two most well-cited and widely republished papers on the subject. In 2005 while working at Cloudmark, Abad spent six months examining the phishing underworld from the inside. Abad discovered that phishers were using

IRC IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...

channels in order to trade personal information. He stalked and collected messages from thirteen chat rooms phishers use. Whereas past phishing researchers believed that phishing was coordinated by highly organized criminals, Abad discovered that phishing rings were decentralized. Abad published his findings in

First Monday ''First Monday'' is an American legal drama television series which aired on CBS during the midseason replacement from January 15 to May 3, 2002. The series centered on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like another 2002 series, '' The Court'', it was i ...

. This paper was the first examination of how the economy of

phishing Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as viruses, worms, adware, or ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticate ...

agents functioned, and highlighted the high degree of specialization within the economy.

20 GOTO 10

Abad was the founder and ownerLee, Ellen
Early computer-generated art revived for S.F. exhibit
''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

''. January 12, 2008. of 20 GOTO 10 (2008–2012), a former gallery which caters not only to fine art, but to "

" art, with an emphasis on technology as art, or exhibits which make the potentially criminal or unethical aspects of computer security accessible to the public. The gallery received many favorable reviews coverage for its airing of art related to the computer underground, including

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...

and 3DHart, Hugh
Art Geek Creates 3-D on a Shoestring
'

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

''. July 9, 2008. art.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abad, Christopher American computer programmers Hackers Living people University of California, Los Angeles alumni 20th-century births Cybercrime Year of birth missing (living people)