On Heterogeneous Covert Networks

Abstract

On Heterogeneous Covert NetworksLindelauf, R.; Borm, P.E.M.; Hamers, H.J.M. General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.-Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research -You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain -You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright, please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. (2008) developed a theoretical framework to determine optimal homogeneous networks taking the above mentioned considerations explicitly into account. In this paper this framework is put to the test by applying it to the 2002 Jemaah Islamiyah Bali bombing. It is found that most aspects of this covert network can be explained by the theoretical framework. Some interactions however provide a higher risk to the network than others. The theoretical framework on covert networks is extended to accommodate for such heterogeneous interactions. Given a network structure the optimal location of one risky interaction is established. It is shown that the pair of individuals in the organization that should conduct the interaction that presents the highest risk to the organization, is the pair that is the least connected to the remainder of the network. Furthermore, optimal networks given a single risky interaction are approximated and compared. When choosing among a path, star and ring graph it is found that for low order graphs the path graph is best. When increasing the order of graphs under consideration a transition occurs such that the star graph becomes best. It is found that the higher the risk a single interaction presents to the covert network the later this transition from path to star graph occurs.

Mathematical Models of Radicalization and Terrorism

“…The same authors propose that rather than eliminating hubs of well-connected individuals hoping that the network will collapse, a better strategy in the absence of a scale-free structure, or in the presence of networks that regenerate themselves, is to employ enough resources to target the entire terrorist cell. The case of terrorists organized in a clique of N nodes, that is a graph where every two nodes are directly connected, has been analyzed in [224]. Because of the structure of a clique, the capture of any of its members would expose all.…”

Leaderless Covert Networks: A Quantitative Approach

“…Lindelauf et al (2009b) consider networks with a single high risk interaction pair, i.e., heterogeneous networks where exactly one link has a higher weight than the other links. They show that in this case the high risk interaction pair should have the least connection to the remainder of the network in order to obtain the largest value of the trade-off performance measure µ.…”

A Quantitative Assessment on 26/11 Mumbai Attack using Social Network Analysis

“…Such networks are structured in such a way as to ensure efficient communication between members without being detected. Explicit theoretical studies have been undertaken on the predictive structure of the covert networks [13][14][15]. These networks are reported to have different formations such as ring, star and path in which the degree of covertness and communication efficiency depend on the connections between the nodes (Fig.…”