The Cybercrime Research Lab (CRL@mq) was established in February 2007 by Macquarie University. The idea of CRL@mq was developed and proposed by Paul Watters and Stephen McCombie.  Initial funding was provided by National Australia Bank.  In 2008 an Australian Research Council linkage grant for $400,000 titled "Defence against Phishing Attacks" was given to CRL@mq to fund further research.

Currently CRL@mq is within Macquarie University and is hosted by the Centre for Advanced Computing - Algorithms and Cryptography (ACAC).

The Research Director of CRL@mq is Professor Josef Pieprzyk of the Department of Computing (also Director of ACAC) and the Academic Director of CRL@mq is Dr Stephen McCombie of the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism and CSC. In addition CRL@mq have a broader interdisciplinary team from various academic areas and industry.