The eleventh NSA Competition for Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper recognizes the best scientific cybersecurity paper published in 2022. Papers were nominated between January 15, 2023 through April 15, 2023. The winning paper was, “Uninvited Guests: Analyzing the Identity and Behavior of Certificate Transparency Bots” authored by Brian Kondracki, Johnny So, and Nick Nikiforakis Stony Brook University. The paper examined a study of automated attacks on new webservers, and explored how a web browser can trust an organization’s publicly issued cryptographic credentials. At the heart of their investigation was a simple question: What happens when you setup a new encrypted website?

Read more about how the winning paper was selected on NSA.gov: https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/News-Highlights/Article/Article/3676583/nsa-awards-authors-of-study-of-automated-attacks-on-new-webservers/

Brian Kondracki

Johnny So

Nick Nikiforakis