An evidence synthesis of strategies, enablers and barriers for keeping secrets online regarding the procurement and supply of illicit drugs

This systematic review attempts to understand how people keep secrets online, and in particular how people use the internet when engaging in covert behaviours and activities regarding the procurement and supply of illicit drugs. With the Internet and social media being part of everyday life for most people in western and non-western countries, there are ever-growing opportunities for individuals to engage in covert behaviours and activities online that may be considered illegal or unethical. A search strategy using Medical Subject Headings terms and relevant key words was developed. A comprehensive literature search of published and unpublished studies in electronic databases was conducted. Additional studies were identified from reference lists of previous studies and (systematic) reviews that had similar objectives as this search, and were included if they fulfilled our in-clusion criteria. Two researchers independently screened abstracts and full-texts for study eligibility and evaluated the quality of included studies. Disagreements were resolved by a consensus procedure. The systematic review includes 33 qualitative studies and one cross-sectional study, published between 2006 and 2018. Five covert behaviours were identified: the use of communication channels; anonymity; visibility reduction; limited posts in public; following forum rules and recommendations. The same technologies that provide individuals with easy access to information, such as social networking sites and forums, digital devices, digital tools and services, also increase the prevalence of inaccurate information, loss of privacy, identity theft and disinhibited communication. This review takes a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to synthesising knowledge on the strategies adopted by people in keeping secrets online. Whilst the focus is on the procurement and supply ofillicit drugs, this knowledge is transferrable to a range of contexts where people keep secrets online. It has particular significance for those who design online/social media applications, and for law enforcement and security agencies

New psychoactive substances (NPS) on cryptomarket fora: An exploratory study of characteristics of forum activity between NPS buyers and vendors

Background The continual diversification of new psychoactive substances (NPS) circumventing legislation creates a public health and law enforcement challenge, and one particularly challenged by availability on Hidden Web cryptomarkets. Methods This is the first study of its kind which aimed to explore and characterise cryptomarket forum members’ views and perspectives on NPS vendors and products within the context of Hidden Web community dynamics. An internal site search was conducted on two cryptomarkets popular with NPS vendors and hosting fora; Alphabay and Valhalla, using the search terms of 40 popular NPS in the seven categories of stimulant/cathinone; GABA activating; hallucinogen, dissociative, cannabinoid, opioid and other/unspecified/uncategorised NPS. 852 identified threads relating to the discussion of these NPS were generated. Following exclusion of duplicates, 138 threads remained. The Empirical Phenomenological Psychological method of data analysis was applied. Four themes and 32 categories emerged. Results 120 vendors selling NPS were visible on Alphabay, and 21 on Valhalla. Themes were ‘NPS Cryptomarkets and Crypto-community interest in NPS’ ‘Motives for NPS use’ ‘Indigenous Crypto Community Harm Reduction’ and ‘Cryptomarket Characteristics underpinning NPS trafficking’, with two higher levels of abstraction centring on ‘NPS vendor reputation’ and ‘NPS transactioning for personal use’. NPS cryptomarket characteristics centred on generation of trust, honesty and excellent service. Users appeared well informed, with harm reduction and vendor information exchange central to NPS market dynamics. GABA activating substances appeared most popular in terms of buyer interest on cryptomarkets. Interest in sourcing ‘old favorite’ stimulant and dissociative NPS was evident, alongside the sequential and concurrent poly use of NPS, and use of NPS with illicit drugs such as MDMA. Conclusion Continued monitoring of new trends in NPS within Surface Web and cryptomarkets are warranted. A particular focus on the rising market in prescribed benzodiazepine and Z-hypnotic drugs should be included. © 2016 Elsevier B.V

Email Babel: Does Language Affect Criminal Activity in Compromised Webmail Accounts?

We set out to understand the effects of differing language on the ability of cybercriminals to navigate webmail accounts and locate sensitive information in them. To this end, we configured thirty Gmail honeypot accounts with English, Romanian, and Greek language settings. We populated the accounts with email messages in those languages by subscribing them to selected online newsletters. We hid email messages about fake bank accounts in fifteen of the accounts to mimic real-world webmail users that sometimes store sensitive information in their accounts. We then leaked credentials to the honey accounts via paste sites on the Surface Web and the Dark Web, and collected data for fifteen days. Our statistical analyses on the data show that cybercriminals are more likely to discover sensitive information (bank account information) in the Greek accounts than the remaining accounts, contrary to the expectation that Greek ought to constitute a barrier to the understanding of non-Greek visitors to the Greek accounts. We also extracted the important words among the emails that cybercriminals accessed (as an approximation of the keywords that they searched for within the honey accounts), and found that financial terms featured among the top words. In summary, we show that language plays a significant role in the ability of cybercriminals to access sensitive information hidden in compromised webmail accounts

Detecting psycho-anomalies on the world-wide web: current tools and challenges

The rise of the use of Social Media and the overall progress of technology has unfortunately opened new ways for criminals such as paedophiles, serial killers and rapists to exploit the powers that the technology offers in order to lure potential victims. It is of great need to be able to detect extreme criminal behaviours on the World-Wide Web and take measures to protect the general public from the effects of such behaviours. The aim of this chapter is to examine the current data analysis tools and technologies that are used to detect extreme online criminal behaviour and the challenges that exist associated with the use of these technologies. Specific emphasis is given to extreme criminal behaviours such as paedophilia and serial killing as these are considered the most dangerous behaviours. A number of conclusions are drawn in relation to the use and challenges of technological means in order to face such criminal behaviours

Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World

Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation.Our Space was co-developed by The Good Play Project and Project New Media Literacies (established at MIT and now housed at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism). The Our Space collaboration grew out of a shared interest in fostering ethical thinking and conduct among young people when exercising new media skills

Mining the Dark Web: Drugs and fake ids

In the last years, governmental bodies have been futilely trying to fight against dark web marketplaces. Shortly after the closing of “The Silk Road” by the FBI and Europol in 2013, new successors have been established. Through the combination of cryptocurrencies and nonstandard communication protocols and tools, agents can anonymously trade in a marketplace for illegal items without leaving any record. This paper presents a research carried out to gain insights on the products and services sold within one of the larger marketplaces for drugs, fake ids and weapons on the Internet, Agora. Our work sheds a light on the nature of the market; there is a clear preponderance of drugs, which accounts for nearly 80% of the total items on sale. The ready availability of counterfeit documents, while they make up for a much smaller percentage of the market, raises worries. Finally, the role of organized crime within Agora is discussed and presented

FloraGuard: tackling the online illegal trade in endangered plants through a cross-disciplinary ICT-enabled methodology.

This article presents a part of the ongoing Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project “FloraGuard: Tackling the illegal trade in endangered plants” that relies on cross-disciplinary approaches to analyze online marketplaces for the illegal trade in endangered plants, and explores strategies to develop digital resources to assist law enforcement in countering and disrupting this criminal market. This contribution focuses on how the project brought together computer science, criminology, conservation science, and law enforcement expertise to create a tool for the automatic gathering of relevant online information to be used for research, intelligence, and investigative purposes. The article also discusses the ethical standards applied and proposes the concept of “artificial intelligence (AI) review” to provide a sociotechnical solution that builds trustworthiness in the AI approaches used for this type of cross-disciplinary information and communications technology (ICT)-enabled methodology

Deception in Authorship Attribution

In digital forensics, questions often arise about the authors of documents: their identity, demographic background, and whether they can be linked to other documents. The field of stylometry uses linguistic features and machine learning techniques to answer these questions. While stylometry techniques can identify authors with high accuracy in non-adversarial scenarios, their accuracy is reduced to random guessing when faced with authors who intentionally obfuscate their writing style or attempt to imitate that of another author. Most authorship attribution methods were not evaluated in challenging real-world datasets with foreign language and unconventional spelling (e.g. l33tsp3ak). In this thesis we explore the performance of authorship attribution methods in adversarial settings where authors take measures to hide their identity by changing their writing style and by creating multiple identities. We show that using a large feature set, it is possible to distinguish regular documents from deceptive documents with high accuracy and present an analysis of linguistic features that can be modified to hide writing style. We show how to adapt regular authorship attribution to difficult datasets such as leaked underground forum and present a method for detecting multiple identities of authors. We demonstrate the utility of our approach with a case study that includes applying our technique to an underground forum and manual analysis to validate the results, enabling the discovery of previously undetected multiple accounts.Ph.D., Computer Science -- Drexel University, 201

A Queer and Feminist Defense of Being Anonymous Online

From the earliest days of digital communities, online abuse has been connected to anonymity. While concerns around the impact of anonymity, particularly for women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, is legitimate, this paper argues that a flat rejection of digital anonymity is problematic, foreclosing certain forms of queer and feminist praxis. To make this case, I turn to the platform politics of Craigslist. Using Craigslist as a case study, I discuss the persistent stigma attached to online anonymity, before addressing specific tactics of online anonymity associated with queer and feminist values of privacy and mutual aid. Drawing on accounts of Craigslist users who saw anonymity as a protective form of control over their personal information, I outline ways in which anonymity is not solely an enabler for misogyny and homophobia, and can instead (or rather, also) be a subversive tool for self-expression and intimacy

Tailoring Election Regulation: The Platform Is the Frame

According to conventional wisdom, legislative efforts to limit platform-based electoral manipulation—including especially laws that go beyond simply mandating additional disclosure about advertising expenditures—are most likely doomed to swift judicial invalidation. In this Essay, I bracket questions about baseline First Amendment coverage and focus on the prediction of inevitable fatality following strict scrutiny. Legislation aimed at electoral manipulation rightly confronts serious concerns about censorship and chilling effects, but the ways that both legislators and courts approach such legislation will also be powerfully influenced by framing choices that inform assessment of whether challenged legislation is responsive to claimed harms and appropriately tailored to the interests it assertedly serves. I identify three frames conventionally employed in evaluating the design of speech regulation—the distribution bottleneck, the rational listener, and the intentional facilitator—and explain why each is ill-suited to the platform-based information environment, which presents different incentives and failure modes. In their place, I offer the platform itself as a new frame. I identify the harms and interests that frame brings into focus and offer some preliminary thoughts on the kinds of legislation it might permit