Dr Katie Paxton-Fear
Lecturer
My profile
Biography
Who am I?
Lecturer in Cyber Security interested in the cross-section of data and security. Hacker and web security researcher, I’ve found real security vulnerabilities in organisations ranging from Verizon to the Department of Defense. I’m also interested in ancient language decipherment as a side interest. I’m a keen knitter and I’ve made many objects.
Words of wisdom
Go fast and break things
How I’ll teach you
I always aim to inspire and inform, I include interactive elements in my teaching and encourage students to get their hands dirty, experiment.
Academic and professional qualifications
- PhD in Defence and Security from Cranfield University
- BSc in Computer Science from Salford University
Practitioner roles
Active web security researcher and educator via YouTube.
Teaching
Why study Cyber Security?
Have you ever wanted to play the bad guy? Well, cyber security is the career for you! From breaking into systems as a penetration tester, finding missing people as an OSINT investigator to securing them as an application security engineer or even becoming an expert witness for the court.
Undergraduate courses
Security Fundamentals
Postgraduate teaching
Penetration Testing and IoT Security
Research outputs
Research expertise
Interdisciplinary research of data science, AI, and cyber security, both in using data science/AI/ML in security and the security of data science/AI/ML software. Web and API security, particularly for cyber-physical systems eg IoT devices.
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Journal articles
Weir, C., Dyson, A., Jogunola, O., Dennis, L., Paxton-Fear, K. (2024) 'Interlinked computing in 2040: safety, truth, ownership, and accountability.' Computer, 57(1) pp. 59-68.
Hodges, D., Paxton-Fear, K. (2021) 'An analysis of the writing of cult members.' Digital Scholarship in the Humanities,
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Conference papers
Attwood, S., Onumah, N., Paxton-Fear, K., Kharel, R. (2022) 'Security-Focused Prototyping: A Natural Precursor to Secure Development.' pp. 356-361.
Paxton-Fear, K. (2021) 'Intro to Bug Bounties.'
Paxton-Fear, K. (2021) 'Hacking APIs for beginners.'
Paxton-Fear, K. (2021) '1) Learn to Hack 2) Choose a Target 3) ??? 4) Get a Bounty.'
Paxton-Fear, K. (2020) 'How to Get Into Bug Bounty.'
Paxton-Fear, K. (2020) 'Introduction to AI & Machine Learning - w/InsiderPhD.'
Paxton-Fear, K., Hodges, D., Buckley, O. (2020) 'Understanding insider threat attacks using natural language processing: Automatically mapping organic narrative reports to existing insider threat frameworks.' In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: HCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust. 12210. Virtual, 19/7/2020 - 24/7/2020. Springer, pp. 619-636.
Paxton-Fear, K. (2020) 'The Ultimate Guide to Bug Bounty Hunting.'
Paxton-Fear, K. (2020) 'Sticking With It: How To Choose a Target & Stay Motivated.'
Paxton-Fear, K., Hodges, D., Buckley, O. (2019) 'Increasing the accessibility of NLP techniques for Defence and Security using a web-based tool.' In Defence and Security Doctoral Symposium. online, 10/11/2019 - 11/11/2019. Cranfield University,
Paxton-Fear, K. (2018) 'A Computational Decipherment of Linear B.' In Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Conference (CAA 2018). Tübingen, Germany, 19/3/2018 - 23/3/2018.
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Theses and dissertations
Paxton-Fear, K. (2017) A Computational Decipherment of Linear B.
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Other
Paxton-Fear, K., Hodges, D., Buckley, O. (2018) Connected events and malicious insiders: Investigating patterns of insider threat using natural language processing.
Press and media
Media appearances or involvement
- Meet the hackers who earn millions for saving the web, one bug at a time (ZDNet)
- Covid: White hat bounty hackers become millionaires (BBC)
- How Diversity in Cybersecurity Can Keep Companies Safer (Wall Street Journal)
- ‘I thought it was a complete fluke’ – Katie Paxton-Fear on her bug bounty baptism and why AI will never fully replace security researchers (Daily Swig)
- ‘Find out what sparks joy’ – YouTube educator and security expert Katie Paxton-Fear on carving out a successful infosec career (Daily Swig)
- Crypto hacker offered reward after $600m heist (BBC News)