The Illicit Ecosystem of Hacking: A Longitudinal Network Analysis of Website Defacement Groups

Abstract

Over the past four decades, research on hackers has widely propagated within the social sciences. Although this area of scholarship yields rich insight into the interpersonal dynamics of hackers, research on the unique ecosystems they create and inhabit is scant in comparison. The current study aims to offer a more complete assessment of hackers’ ecosystems by incorporating the group affiliations which link hackers to one another. Using 12 months of archived website defacement data containing individuals’ self-reported group affiliations alongside their hacking activities, the study reconstructs the social network of hacker groups over time. Findings reveal the illicit ecosystem to be loosely connected, yet densely clustered around a few central groups. The ecosystem also maintained its network features across the observation period with no sign of structural degradation. These findings corroborate extant research on the social environments of hackers, offer an innovative look into the illicit ecosystem of website defacers, and serve as a steppingstone to extend investigations of criminal behavior to the group-level.

Digital Drift and the Evolution of a Large Cybercrime Forum

“…This work combines perspectives across many fields, including theory from criminology. The social aspects of cybercriminals has been studied across criminological literature and quantitative social science [11], [24], [27], [30], including the application of social network analysis approaches [12], [29], [35], ranging from studying small real-world criminal groups to larger online communities. This has included using ground truth data following arrests, to build up real-world social networks of key hackers and model how a network could be destabilised [12], and the use of time-series data in longitudinal network analysis for exploring online ecosystems of hacking defacement groups [35].…”