Bhupendra Acharya

University of Louisiana
School of Computing-Informatics
Oliver Hall, Office 353
301 E. Lewis Street
Lafayette, LA 70503
E: fname[.]lname@louisiana.edu

NEWS

Aug 01, 2025:
Excited to join CMIX Faculty at the ULL, School of Computing and Informatics as an Assistant Professor

Jun 13, 2025:
Thrilled to attend Max Planck Institute of Technology retreat at Bad Bresig and looking forward to future collaboration with MPI-ULL settings

May 16, 2025:
Super excited to share that I accepted an offer of Assistant Professor from the University of Louisiana and looking for PhD students

Dec 06, 2024:
Online Guest Speaker, Presented Talk on "Challenges and Methodologies: Empirical Study of Scams and Attacks on Social Media Platforms" at MIT (CAMS)

Sep 26, 2024:
In-person Guest Speaker, Presented Talk on "Empirical Study of Scams and Attacks on Social Media Platforms through AI-Powered Automated Engagement" at e-Crime

See archived news

Welcome!

Short Bio. Since August 2025, I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette in the School of Computing and Informatics. Prior to this, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security (Mar 2023 - Jul 2025) and had an amazing opportunity to work with Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz. I completed my Ph.D. from the University of New Orleans under the supervision of Dr. Phani Vadrevu. My research group often collaborate with researchers from diverse institutes solving real-world applied security issues especially related to Internet cybercrimes and web attacks.

Current Focus. My research group work centers on exploring various aspects of Internet cybercrimes, including phishing, scams, illicit activities, money laundering, and online abuse. The primary objective is to develop effective defense mechanisms against these threats. Our current research spans the following areas: -

i) Creating proactive mechanisms to detect and prevent emerging threats and cybercrimes on the Internet
ii) Exploring the detailed operations of illicit campaigns, including cryptocurrency and money laundering
iii) Detecting fraudulent social media profiles and web domains targeting users in different attack scenarios
iv) Conducting large-scale web measurements at the intersection of privacy and security to identify risks to users and platforms

Selected Publications

Pirates of Charity: Exploring Donation-based Abuses in Social Media Platforms
Bhupendra Acharya, Dario Lazzaro, Antonio Emanuele Cinà, Thorsten Holz
Proceedings of ACM World Wide Web Conference (WWW), 2025
Sydney, Australia, 2025.
Acceptance Rate: 409/2062 (19.83%)
PDF
The Imitation Game: Exploring Brand Impersonation Attacks on Social Media Platforms
Bhupendra Acharya, Dario Lazzaro, Efren Lopez Morales, Adam Oest, Muhammad Saad,
Antonio Emanuele Cinà, Lea Schönherr, Thorsten Holz
Proceedings of The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2024.
PDF
Conning the Crypto Conman: End-to-End Analysis of Cryptocurrency-based Technical Support Scams
Bhupendra Acharya, Muhammad Saad, Antonio Emanuele Cinà, Lea Schönherr, Hoang Dai Nguyen, Adam Oest, Phani Vadrevu, Thorsten Holz
Proceedings of The 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P)
San Francisco, CA, May 2024.
PDF
A Human in Every APE: Delineating and Evaluating the Human Analysis Systems of Anti-Phishing Entities
Bhupendra Acharya, Phani Vadrevu
Proceedings of The 19th Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA)
Cagliari, Italy, Jun 29-Jul 1, 2022
PDF
PhishPrint:Evading Phishing Detection Crawlers by Prior Profiling
Bhupendra Acharya, Phani Vadrevu
Proceedings of The 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
Vancouver, BC, Canada, Aug 11-13, 2021
PDF