The Relative Ineffectiveness of Criminal Network Disruption

Duijn, Paul; Kashirin, Victor V.; Sloot, Peter M. A.

doi:10.1038/srep04238

Cited by 187 publications

(204 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Under such term, terrorist networks, fake-news spreading networks, malnets or botnets used in DDoS attacks, or for spreading worms and viruses, dark networks involved in various criminal activities like illegal arm selling or child pornography, and so forth can be understood [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Attack strategies on such harmful complex networks (i.e., node deletion and occasionally also edge deletion) are studied in [21][22][23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combined Heuristic Attack Strategy on Complex Networks

Šimon

Ľuptáková

Huraj

et al. 2017

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

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Usually, the existence of a complex network is considered an advantage feature and efforts are made to increase its robustness against an attack. However, there exist also harmful and/or malicious networks, from social ones like spreading hoax, corruption, phishing, extremist ideology, and terrorist support up to computer networks spreading computer viruses or DDoS attack software or even biological networks of carriers or transport centers spreading disease among the population. New attack strategy can be therefore used against malicious networks, as well as in a worst-case scenario test for robustness of a useful network. A common measure of robustness of networks is their disintegration level after removal of a fraction of nodes. This robustness can be calculated as a ratio of the number of nodes of the greatest remaining network component against the number of nodes in the original network. Our paper presents a combination of heuristics optimized for an attack on a complex network to achieve its greatest disintegration. Nodes are deleted sequentially based on a heuristic criterion. Efficiency of classical attack approaches is compared to the proposed approach on Barabási-Albert, scale-free with tunable power-law exponent, and Erdős-Rényi models of complex networks and on real-world networks. Our attack strategy results in a faster disintegration, which is counterbalanced by its slightly increased computational demands.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combined Heuristic Attack Strategy on Complex Networks

Šimon

Ľuptáková

Huraj

et al. 2017

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

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“…La estructura de las redes por género y la general de testudíneos reflejan la importancia y necesidad de las acciones policivas coordinadas con las Corporaciones Autónomas Regionales y demás entidades ambientales en las escalas local, municipal, departamental, regional y nacional que permitan el control y prevención del tráfico ilegal de múltiples especies. Si bien la estructura de la red muestra la existencia de nodos que intermedian el tráfico y donde pueden establecerse controles a su paso, es necesario que éste sea un ejercicio informado, pues las acciones ejecutadas de forma aleatoria pueden no producir impactos importantes en la función de la red (Wang et al, 2010;Duijn et al, 2014). Aunque las acciones policivas pueden tener fuertes impactos sobre el uso ilegal de especies, su naturaleza coercitiva implica efectos a corto plazo (Roberts y Everton, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionunclassified

Illegal Trade of Tortoises (Testudinata) in Colombia: A Network Analysis Approach

Bermudez¹,

Goyeneche²,

Gómez³

et al. 2014

Acta biol. colomb.

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“…This result provides a mathematical foundation to the common-sense notion of beneficial quick intervention and is in agreement with previous results on attempts to dismantle operational criminal networks. For example, in studies of drug trafficking networks in the Netherlands every disruption strategy proposed was largely ineffective except when performed during the nascent phase of the criminal organization [20] . While the disruption and recruitment processes analyzed in the latter work are different from ours, we can draw a similar conclusion on the importance of "proactively" attacking organized crime networks before they become too entrenched within society and eradication proves more and more elusive.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growth and containment of a hierarchical criminal network

et al. 2016

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We model the hierarchical evolution of an organized criminal network via antagonistic recruitment and pursuit processes. Within the recruitment phase, a criminal kingpin enlists new members into the network, who in turn seek out other affiliates. New recruits are linked to established criminals according to a probability distribution that depends on the current network structure. At the same time, law enforcement agents attempt to dismantle the growing organization using pursuit strategies that initiate on the lower level nodes and that unfold as self-avoiding random walks. The global details of the organization are unknown to law enforcement, who must explore the hierarchy node by node. We halt the pursuit when certain local criteria of the network are uncovered, encoding if and when an arrest is made; the criminal network is assumed to be eradicated if the kingpin is arrested. We first analyze recruitment and study the large scale properties of the growing network; later we add pursuit and use numerical simulations to study the eradication probability in the case of three pursuit strategies, the time to first eradication and related costs. Within the context of this model, we find that eradication becomes increasingly costly as the network increases in size and that the optimal way of arresting the kingpin is to intervene at the early stages of network formation. We discuss our results in the context of dark network disruption and their implications on possible law enforcement strategies.

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The Relative Ineffectiveness of Criminal Network Disruption

Cited by 187 publications

References 50 publications

Combined Heuristic Attack Strategy on Complex Networks

Combined Heuristic Attack Strategy on Complex Networks

Illegal Trade of Tortoises (Testudinata) in Colombia: A Network Analysis Approach

Growth and containment of a hierarchical criminal network

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