A Social Network Analysis Tool for Uncovering Cybersecurity Threats

The paper presents the design and implementation of the Cybersecurity Social Network Analyser ( CSNA ) platform. The CSNA is a software system for real time automated analysis of cybersecurity-related information available on Social Networks, with a focus on Twitter. Its aim is to uncover cybersecurity breach related discussions and posts, identify emerging cybersecurity incidents and provide, in a timely fashion, early warning alerts. The CSNA platform presents the results from the analysis of the gathered information in a variety of graphical formats for easy visualisation of potential threats within user-specified time windows of interest. We complement our description with a demonstration of the real time information provided by the platform during its operation on the Twitter social network.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Vasileios Vlachos

Yannis C. Stamatiou

Pantelis Tzamalis

Sotiris Nikoletseas

Kyriaki Chantzi

Conference

Publication date: September 2019

Publication date (Print): September 2019

Pages: 97-106

Affiliations

[1 ]Computer Technology Institute & Press -– ”DIOPHANTUS”,

Nikou Kazantzaki str.,

University of Patras Campus, GR-256504,

Rio, Patras, Greece

[2 ]University of Thessaly, General Department,

Larissa – Trikala Ring Road, GR-41110

Larissa, Greece

[2 ]Business Administration Department,

University of Patras, GR-26504,

Rio, Patras, Greece

[2 ]Computer Engineering and Informatics Department

University of Patras GR-26504

Rio, Patras, Greece

[0005]University of Thessaly,

Larissa – Trikala Ring Road, GR-41110

Larissa, Greece

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/icscsr19.13

SO-VID: fb4f3cc9-f700-43cc-9fcd-c377546efdbe

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: 6th International Symposium for ICS & SCADA Cyber Security Research 2019

Conference acronym: ICS-CSR

Conference number: 6

Conference location: Athens, Greece

Conference date: 10th-12th September 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Cyber Security Research

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/icscsr19.13

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

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R. AndersonC. BartonR. BöhmeR. ClaytonM. J. G. van EetenM. LeviT. MooreS. Savage 2013 Measuring the Cost of Cybercrime 265 300 Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
J. ArminP. FotiM. Cremonini 2015 0-day vulnerabilities and cybercrime Proceedings of the 2015 10th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES ’15, Washington, DC, USA 711 718 IEEE Computer Society
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P. BurnapR. GibsonL. SloanR. SouthernM. L. Williams 2015 140 characters to victory?: Using twitter to predict the UK 2015 general election CoRR abs/1505.01511
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M. ChoyM. L. F. CheongN. L. MaK. P. Shung 2012 Us presidential election 2012 prediction using census corrected twitter model CoRR
S. EgelmanC. HerleyP. C. van Oorschot 2013 Markets for zero-day exploits: Ethics and implications Proceedings of the 2013 New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW ’13 New York, NY, USA 41 46 ACM
D. Gayo-Avello 2012 “i wanted to predict elections with twitter and all i got was this lousy paper” - a balanced survey on election prediction using twitter data CoRR abs/1204.6441
A. JungherrP. Jürgens 2013 Forecasting the pulse: How deviations from regular patterns in online data can identify offline phenomena Internet Research 23 5 589 607
V. KaganA. StevensV. S. Subrahmanian 2015 Using twitter sentiment to forecast the 2013 pakistani election and the 2014 indian election IEEE Intelligent Systems 30 1 2 5
S. K. KolliasV. VlachosA. PapanikolaouV. Assimakopoulos 2011 Adapting econometric models, technical analysis and correlation data to computer security data 2011 First SysSec Workshop 59 62
Y. MaoW. WeiB. WangB. Liu 2012 Correlating s&p 500 stocks with twitter data Proceedings of the First ACM International Workshop on Hot Topics on Interdisciplinary Social Networks Research, HotSocial ’12 New York, NY, USA 69 72 ACM
C. Miller 2007 The legitimate vulnerability market: Inside the secretive world of 0-day exploit sales In Sixth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security
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N. OliveiraP. CortezN. Areal 2013 On the predictability of stock market behavior using stocktwits sentiment and posting volume EPIA
R. PriedhorskyD. OsthusA. R. DaughtonK. R. MoranN. GenerousG. FairchildA. DeshpandeS. Y. Del Valle 2017 Measuring global disease with wikipedia: Success, failure, and a research agenda Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW ’17 New York, NY, USA 1812 1834 ACM
T. RaoS. Srivastava 2012 Analyzing stock market movements using twitter sentiment analysis Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2012), ASONAM ’12 Washington, DC, USA 119 123 IEEE Computer Society
J. RittermanM. OsborneE. Klein 2009 Using prediction markets and twitter to predict a swine flu pandemic In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mining Social
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S. Schechter 2005 Towards econometric models of the security risk from remote attacks IEEE Security & Privacy 3 1 40 44
A. SignoriniA. M. SegreP. M. Polgreen 2011 The Use of Twitter to Track Levels of Disease Activity and Public Concern in the U.S. during the Influenza A H1N1 Pandemic PLoS ONE 6 e19467
R. TelangS. Wattal 2007 An empirical analysis of the impact of software vulnerability announcements on firm stock price IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 33 544 557
A. TumasjanT. SprengerP. SandnerI. Welpe 2010 Predicting elections with twitter: What 140 characters reveal about political sentiment Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media 178 185
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X. WangM. S. GerberD. E. Brown 2012 Automatic crime prediction using events extracted from twitter posts S. J. YangA. M. GreenbergM. Endsley Social Computing, Behavioral - Cultural Modeling and Prediction Berlin, Heidelberg 231 238 Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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W. ZhongqingZ. Yue 2017 Ddos event forecasting using twitter data Proceedings of the 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-17) Melbourne, Australia 4151 4157

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] S. AhmedM. Skoric 2015 Twitter and 2013 Pakistan general election: The case of David 2.0 against goliaths 139 161 Springer International Publishing

[2] R. AndersonC. BartonR. BöhmeR. ClaytonM. J. G. van EetenM. LeviT. MooreS. Savage 2013 Measuring the Cost of Cybercrime 265 300 Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

[3] J. ArminP. FotiM. Cremonini 2015 0-day vulnerabilities and cybercrime Proceedings of the 2015 10th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES ’15, Washington, DC, USA 711 718 IEEE Computer Society

[4] J. BendlerA. RatkuD. Neumann 2014 Crime mapping through geo-spatial social media activity See [4]

[5] A. BovetF. MoroneH. A. Makse 2016 Predicting election trends with twitter: Hillary clinton versus donald trump CoRR

[6] P. BurnapR. GibsonL. SloanR. SouthernM. L. Williams 2015 140 characters to victory?: Using twitter to predict the UK 2015 general election CoRR abs/1505.01511

[7] M. ChoyM. L. F. CheongN. L. MaK. P. Shung 2011 A sentiment analysis of singapore presidential election 2011 using twitter data with census correction CoRR

[8] M. ChoyM. L. F. CheongN. L. MaK. P. Shung 2012 Us presidential election 2012 prediction using census corrected twitter model CoRR

[9] S. EgelmanC. HerleyP. C. van Oorschot 2013 Markets for zero-day exploits: Ethics and implications Proceedings of the 2013 New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW ’13 New York, NY, USA 41 46 ACM

[10] D. Gayo-Avello 2012 “i wanted to predict elections with twitter and all i got was this lousy paper” - a balanced survey on election prediction using twitter data CoRR abs/1204.6441

[11] A. JungherrP. Jürgens 2013 Forecasting the pulse: How deviations from regular patterns in online data can identify offline phenomena Internet Research 23 5 589 607

[12] V. KaganA. StevensV. S. Subrahmanian 2015 Using twitter sentiment to forecast the 2013 pakistani election and the 2014 indian election IEEE Intelligent Systems 30 1 2 5

[13] S. K. KolliasV. VlachosA. PapanikolaouV. Assimakopoulos 2011 Adapting econometric models, technical analysis and correlation data to computer security data 2011 First SysSec Workshop 59 62

[14] Y. MaoW. WeiB. WangB. Liu 2012 Correlating s&p 500 stocks with twitter data Proceedings of the First ACM International Workshop on Hot Topics on Interdisciplinary Social Networks Research, HotSocial ’12 New York, NY, USA 69 72 ACM

[15] C. Miller 2007 The legitimate vulnerability market: Inside the secretive world of 0-day exploit sales In Sixth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security

[16] R. NagarQ. YuanC. C. FreifeldM. SantillanaA. NojimaR. ChunaraJ. S. Brownstein 2014 Oct A case study of the new york city 2012-2013 influenza season with daily geocoded twitter data from temporal and spatiotemporal perspectives J Med Internet Res 16 10 e236

[17] N. OliveiraP. CortezN. Areal 2013 On the predictability of stock market behavior using stocktwits sentiment and posting volume EPIA

[18] R. PriedhorskyD. OsthusA. R. DaughtonK. R. MoranN. GenerousG. FairchildA. DeshpandeS. Y. Del Valle 2017 Measuring global disease with wikipedia: Success, failure, and a research agenda Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW ’17 New York, NY, USA 1812 1834 ACM

[19] T. RaoS. Srivastava 2012 Analyzing stock market movements using twitter sentiment analysis Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2012), ASONAM ’12 Washington, DC, USA 119 123 IEEE Computer Society

[20] J. RittermanM. OsborneE. Klein 2009 Using prediction markets and twitter to predict a swine flu pandemic In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mining Social

[21] M. SantillanaA. T. NguyenM. DredzeM. J. PaulE. O. NsoesieJ. S. Brownstein 2015 Combining search, social media, and traditional data sources to improve influenza surveillance PLoS Computational Biology

[22] S. Schechter 2005 Towards econometric models of the security risk from remote attacks IEEE Security & Privacy 3 1 40 44

[23] A. SignoriniA. M. SegreP. M. Polgreen 2011 The Use of Twitter to Track Levels of Disease Activity and Public Concern in the U.S. during the Influenza A H1N1 Pandemic PLoS ONE 6 e19467

[24] R. TelangS. Wattal 2007 An empirical analysis of the impact of software vulnerability announcements on firm stock price IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 33 544 557

[25] A. TumasjanT. SprengerP. SandnerI. Welpe 2010 Predicting elections with twitter: What 140 characters reveal about political sentiment Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media 178 185

[26] L. VomfellW. K. HärdleS. Lessmann 2018 Improving crime count forecasts using twitter and taxi data Decision Support Systems 113 73 85

[27] X. WangM. S. GerberD. E. Brown 2012 Automatic crime prediction using events extracted from twitter posts S. J. YangA. M. GreenbergM. Endsley Social Computing, Behavioral - Cultural Modeling and Prediction Berlin, Heidelberg 231 238 Springer Berlin Heidelberg

[28] M. ZhivichR. K. Cunningham 2009 The real cost of software errors IEEE Security & Privacy 7 2 87 90

[29] W. ZhongqingZ. Yue 2017 Ddos event forecasting using twitter data Proceedings of the 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-17) Melbourne, Australia 4151 4157

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