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A Social Network Analysis and Comparison of Six Dark Web Forums

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Conference Object

Change log

Authors

Chua, YT 
Bada, M 

Abstract

With increasing monitoring and regulation by platforms, communities with criminal interests are moving to the dark web, which hosts content ranging from whistle-blowing and privacy, to drugs, terrorism, and hacking. Using post discussion data from six dark web forums we construct six interaction graphs and use social network analysis tools to study these underground communities. We observe the structure of each network to highlight structural patterns and identify nodes of importance through network centrality analysis. Our findings suggest that in the majority of the forums some members are highly connected and form hubs, while most members have a lower number of connections. When examining the posting activities of central nodes we found that most of the central nodes post in sub-forums with broader topics, such as general discussions and tutorials. These members play different roles in the different forums, and within each forum we identified diverse user profiles.

Description

Keywords

Social Network Analysis, Online communities, Dark Web, Social Interactions

Journal Title

Proceedings - 5th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2020

Conference Name

2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW)

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

IEEE

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M020320/1)
EPSRC (EP/V026178/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (2276284)
EPSRC Doctoral Training Studentship (Jack Hughes)