En Social Nätverksanalys av ett Hackerforum

Sammanfattning: The spread and societal dependence on the internet has increased the threat posed by criminal hackers. While often thought of as lone wolfs, hackers often exist in communities and a widespread subculture. Due to the nature of hacker activity, these communities are often situated online, such as in forums, which provide an excellent opportunity for observation and study. An increased threat level brings an increased need for protection and countermeasures, but also for cyber threat intelligence (CTI) to indicate what groups, people, and tools could come to pose a threat. Social network analysis has the potential to play a key role in in transforming CTI into something more proactive than it is today. The goal of this study was to use SNA to map and analyse an online hacking forum to determine its general and structural properties, as well as investigate its central members. The forum was determined to be comparatively large, cohesive, and decentralized. One user stuck out as most central in terms of all metrics but one, some ranked high for several metrics, and some where only standing out in one respect, all with implications for their characteristics.