Monitoring Social And Virtual Networks For Nefarious Activities

Within the past decade, social networks have changed the way we communicate with friends, family, and other people who have a working relationship in our lives.  Because of this, the ease of use and simplicity of social network activities have replaced phone calls and emails as a primary means of communication for many individuals.  This fairly new dimension of online communication is not only revolutionizing the way people communicate, but also opens the door to numerous online threats, specifically cyber-terrorism.  In this research project, the current abilities and features of social networks will be discussed.  Once familiarity with the capabilities of social networks has been established, examples of cyber-terrorism will be analyzed from a social network site’s point of view.  Cladestine message passing using online social network sites is a prominent concern in the fight against global terrorism.  Using social network analysis and network monitoring techniques, we present an agent designed to capture and collect text-based conversations from social and virtual networks such as Second Life.  We find that collecting and analyzing text-based conversations in social network sites enhance our ability to monitor and detect individuals or groups attempting to conspire, plot, and coordinate nefarious activities.