Digital Technologies and Crime

Our primary focus is on analysing and understanding criminal activity, misconduct and antisocial behaviour that takes place online or is facilitated by, the internet or digital systems and environments.

Key research areas

  • new vulnerabilities for victims of online fraud;
  • data loss and data exposure;
  • serious and organised crimes such as money laundering and illicit financial flows;
  • online child sexual exploitation;
  • online extremism;
  • drugs vending on encrypted marketplaces;
  • cybercrimes affecting and facilitated by private organisations, citizens and global economies.

Research projects

  • The nature, organisation and governance of deviant activities that negatively affect online sports betting markets (A scoping review of the academic, policy and industry literature on the nature, organisation and governance of illicit activities in gambling markets, domestically in the UK and globally).
  • CyberUp – analysing the growth in cybercrime during COVID-19 and post-pandemic trends (The disruption generated by COVID-19 is not limited to those who suffer the disease, lockdown and social distancing measures have had unintended impacts on complex social domains, including cybercrime and fraud. This project explores changes in rates of cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled crime during and after the pandemic).
  • Re-counting crime: new methods to improve the accuracy of estimates of crime (Aims to understand the nature of the gaps in crime data coverage, explore the implications of relying on crime estimates prone to measurement error, develop adjustment methods and estimate new 'corrected' crime counts at the local area level).

Priority areas of research interest

  • Digital Infrastructures and Contexts - including the study of hidden cryptomarkets, cryptocurrencies, and shadow infrastructures for digital communication, and new technologies and crime (eg Internet of Things, smart devices).
  • FinTech and Financial Crimes - includes the study of cyber-enabled fraud, illicit financial flows and money laundering, and sports betting markets.
  • Digital Harms - includes the study of the harms of cybercrime and digital misconduct, online mis/disinformation, online sexual abuse, online extremism and offline violent action, and cybernoia.
  • Digital Adversaries - includes the study of regulator-regulate digital interactions, businesses as drivers, facilitators, and victims of digital misconduct, and cybercrime reporting to the police.
  • Synthetic Crime Data - includes the study of privacy-enhancing technologies, mechanisms to report crime to the police, and measurement error in crime data.

Upcoming Events

DAO Governance Takeover Attack on the blockchain: Code as Law, Cybersecurity and Governance

Webinar: Wednesday, 28 March 2026, 12-1 pm

  • Dr Joseph Lee Nazzini, University of Manchester, Department of Law
  • Dr Zhipeng Wang, University of Manchester, Department of Computer Science

Register your place on Eventbrite.

In this talk, we analyse the DAO governance takeover attack as a major governance-level cybersecurity risk in blockchain systems by examining several cases, primarily the DAO Hack.

Using historical examples, we show how flaws in both smart-contract code and governance design can create the conditions for potential DAO attacks. We further discuss how attacks on application-layer DAOs can, under certain conditions, propagate systemic risks to the underlying blockchain system. We also contrast DAO governance attacks with 51% and other majority-based attacks on the consensus layer.

We aim to understand how code-as-law functions in the blockchain space, particularly in the context of DAOs, and to conceptualise ‘bugs’ in deployed code. We propose several measures to mitigate this cybersecurity risk.

Past events

Digital Technologies, Crime and Law Conference, 11 June 2025

On 11 June 2025, Digital Futures at The University of Manchester and the Centre for Digital Trust and Society (CDTS) proudly hosted the Digital Technology, Crime, and the Law Conference at No.1 Circle Square, Manchester. This full-day, interdisciplinary event welcomed a diverse audience of academics, legal experts, industry practitioners, and policymakers to explore how digital innovation intersects with crime prevention, legal governance, and trust-building in a fast-evolving technological world.

Investigating Wrench Attacks: Physical Attacks Targeting Cryptocurrency Users
Marilyne Ordekia, UCL
20 October 2025 

Cryptocurrency wrench attacks are physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency users in the real world to illegally obtain cryptocurrencies. These attacks significantly undermine the efficacy of existing digital security norms when confronted with real-world threats. We present the first comprehensive study on wrench attacks. We propose a theoretical approach to defining wrench attacks per criminal law norms, and an interdisciplinary empirical approach to measure their incidence. Leveraging three data sources, we perform crime script analysis, detecting incidents globally across 10 interviews with victims and experts, 146 news articles, and 37 online forums. Our findings reveal diverse groups of attackers ranging from organized crime groups to friends and family, various modi operandi, and different forms of attacks varying from blackmail to murder. Despite existing since Bitcoin’s early days, these attacks are underreported due to revictimization fears. Additionally, unlike other cryptocurrency crimes, users with advanced security experience were not immune to them. We identify potential vulnerabilities in users' behavior and encourage cryptocurrency holders to lean into digital as well as physical safety measures to protect themselves and their cryptocurrency. We offer actionable recommendations for the security community and regulators, highlighting the double-edged sword of Know Your Customer policies.

Crypto and Crime in Taiwan
Wayne Wei-yuan Lo, Head Prosecutor, Taipei, Taiwan  
3 November 2025

 As a prosecutor specialising in blockchain-related crime, Wei-Yuan Wayne Lo examines how the rise of blockchain technology has accelerated the growth of virtual assets while also creating new avenues for criminal misuse. The presentation first outlines Taiwan’s regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers, then analyzes how offenders employ blockchain to facilitate money laundering. It further explores how Taiwanese law enforcement agencies leverage blockchain analytics to interpret on-chain records, trace fund flows, and uncover illicit patterns. Drawing on prosecutorial experience, the discussion highlights both the investigative challenges and the technological breakthroughs that strengthen Taiwan’s response to crypto-enabled crime, illustrating the interplay between regulation, enforcement, and innovation in safeguarding financial integrity. 

The Role of Third-Party Intelligence in Transparent Markets
 Jonathan Reiter, CEO ChainArgos  
3 December 2025

The promise of public ledgers is that everyone can see everything. But most public data is not usable by most end users. Instead over the last decade this dynamic led to a proliferation of blockchain intelligence tools and services that leverage available data to address a wide variety of use cases. These tools and services now form an essential part of the digital asset ecosystem. Simultaneously, when third parties can access the same information as regulators and law enforcement new supervisory modalities become available. This, in turn, can require new intelligence tooling. In this talk we discuss the variety of roles blockchain intelligence providers can play in transparent markets, explore how transparency enables novel, more efficient market governance mechanisms and provide an overview of the sorts of business models the digital asset ecosystem can support.

People

Members: Prof Judith Aldridge, Dr Riza Theresa Batista-Navarro, Dr Katie Benson, Prof Emma Barrett, Dr Rosemary Broad, Allysa Czerwinsky, Dr Tomas Diviak, Mr Peter Duncan, Dr Sandra Flynn, Dr Eon Kim, Ms Shirin Khawjah, Prof Nicholas Lord, Mr Erick Mendez Guzman, Dr Andrea Nini, Dr Mihaela Popa-Wyatt, Dr Olga Sanchez de Ribera, Dr Jon Shute, Dr Youcheng Sun, Dr Nico Trajtenberg, Dr Polly Turner, Dr Meropi Tzanetakis, Dr Verity Wainwright, Dr Yuanyuan Zhang.