RO  EN
IMI/Publicaţii/CSJM/Ediţii/CSJM v.31, n.2 (92), 2023/

Identifying key players in a network of child exploitation websites using Principal Component Analysis

Authors: Fateme Movahedi, Richard Frank
Keywords: Social network analysis, Child exploitation, Network disruption, Attack strategy, Web content.

Abstract

One of the main objectives of this study is to help prioritize targets for law enforcement by analyzing online websites hosting child exploitation material and finding key players within. Key players are defined as websites that display a combination of high connectivity and a lot of hardcore material and would provide the most disruption in a network if they were to be removed. In this study, various strategies based on Principal Component Analysis are presented to identify those nodes that act as the key players in an online child exploitation network. For evaluating the results of these strategies, we consider the results of various attack strategies. The measures for evaluation are the density, clustering coefficient, average path length, diameter, and the number of connected components in the resulting network. The results show that the strategies proposed are more successful at reducing all of the outcome measures than existing strategies.

Fateme Movahedi
ORCID: https://orcid.org/nnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnn
Department of Mathematics,
Faculty of Sciences, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran.
MoCSSy Program, The IRMACS Centre, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British
Columbia, Canada.
E-mail:
Richard Frank
ORCID: https://orcid.org/nnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnn
School of Criminology International CyberCrime Research Centre,
Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, B.C., Canada. V5A 1S6.
E-mail:

DOI

https://doi.org/10.56415/csjm.v31.08

Fulltext

Adobe PDF document – 0.72 Mb