APWG announces 14 accepted papers for 2026 eCrime symposium

APWG has selected 14 papers from more than 40 submissions for its 2026 Symposium on Electronic Crime Research, to be presented at eCrime 2026 Lisboa and published in IEEE Xplore. The papers focus on phishing, fraud ecosystems, social engineering and AI-enabled defenses as cybercrime research moves deeper into cross-border, interdisciplinary response.

Why it matters: - APWG’s eCrime symposium is one of the field’s main research venues for cybercrime measurement and defense. - The accepted papers focus on threats that affect people, platforms and institutions at scale, including phishing, scam infrastructure, information manipulation and mobile abuse. - The work underscores a shift toward coordinated, interdisciplinary defenses against cybercrime ecosystems that are faster and more distributed.

What happened: - The managing chairs of APWG’s 2026 Symposium on Electronic Crime Research announced 14 accepted papers selected from more than 40 submissions. - The papers will be presented at eCrime 2026 Lisboa alongside sessions featuring industry, law enforcement, NGOs and multilateral organizations. - The papers will be published in IEEE Xplore. - APWG said the 2026 conference marks eCrime’s 19th year as an IEEE conference.

The details: - The accepted papers cover phishing infrastructure, criminal economies, social engineering, human behavior, information manipulation and AI-driven defenses. - Peter Cassidy, APWG founder and secretary general, said rigorous research helps frame problem statements and focus attention on overlooked solution spaces. - Cassidy also said eCrime’s role is to bring together scientific disciplines and the global cybercrime research community to build shared knowledge, semantic foundations and institutional commitments. - Researchers from McGill University, the University of Maryland, MPI-SP, Vicomtech, Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Florida, Fordham University, the University of Auckland, the University of Washington, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Palo Alto Networks and A*STAR contributed accepted work. - APWG listed 14 paper titles spanning phishing detection, blocklist coverage, fraud ecosystems, phishing attribution, visa-related scam exposure, Telegram scam support networks, phishing domain survival, agentic scambaiting, hidden email content, mobile permission misuse, suspected foreign influence activity, mobile messaging scams, clipboard hijacking and dark-web CAPTCHA breaking. - The symposium invited questions or preprint requests at ecrime2026@apwg.org. - APWG also provided social links for LinkedIn, Facebook and X.

Between the lines: - The paper list points to a broader research emphasis on the full cybercrime pipeline, not just endpoint detection. - Several studies target attacker ecosystems, support markets and operational workflows, suggesting defenders are moving upstream to disrupt fraud before it scales. - Multiple papers use large datasets and cross-platform measurement, which signals growing interest in empirically grounded cybercrime research rather than isolated case studies. - The inclusion of agentic AI defenses and agentic AI attacks shows how quickly generative and autonomous systems are becoming central to both offense and defense.

What's next: - The accepted papers will appear at eCrime 2026 Lisboa and in IEEE Xplore. - Conference sessions will bring together researchers and operational stakeholders from the private sector, law enforcement, civil society and multilateral institutions. - Follow-up questions and preprint requests can be sent to ecrime2026@apwg.org.

The bottom line: - APWG is using its 2026 eCrime symposium to showcase research that treats cybercrime as a large-scale, adaptive system requiring coordinated, international defense.