Uncovering the dark Web: A case study of Jihad on the Web

Abstract

While the Web has become a worldwide platform for communication, terrorists share their ideology and communicate with members on the "Dark Web"-the reverse side of the Web used by terrorists. Currently, the problems of information overload and difficulty to obtain a comprehensive picture of terrorist activities hinder effective and efficient analysis of terrorist information on the Web. To improve understanding of terrorist activities, we have developed a novel methodology for collecting and analyzing Dark Web information. The methodology incorporates information collection, analysis, and visualization techniques, and exploits various Web information sources. We applied it to collecting and analyzing information of 39 Jihad Web sites and developed visualization of their site contents, relationships, and activity levels. An expert evaluation showed that the methodology is very useful and promising, having a high potential to assist in investigation and understanding of terrorist activities by producing results that could potentially help guide both policymaking and intelligence research.

Arab Spring Effects on Meanings for Islamist Web Terms and on Web Hyperlink Networks among Muslim-Majority Nations: A Naturalistic Field Experiment

“…These Web-based documents contain the extensive and enduring political statements of groups actively involved in movements (Chen, Chung, Qin, Ried, Sageman, & Weimann, 2008;Kropczynski & Nah, 2011;Ackland & O'Neil, 2011). Social media generate rapid and widespread access to these fundamental Web documents and virally diffuse them, in addition to their movement management affordances.…”

Hybrid focused crawling on the Surface and the Dark Web

“…Furthermore, a methodology for collecting and analyzing Dark Web information has been applied on a set of Jihad Web sites, with the aim to aid the process of intelligence gathering and to improve the understanding of terrorist and extremist activities [10]. Both projects have addressed the whole breadth of terrorist and extremist content, rather than HME information, as done here.…”

A comparative study of social networking approaches in identifying the covert nodes

“…Hsinchun Chen, Wingyan Chung, Jialun Qin, Edna Reid, Marc Sageman, Gabriel Weimann [30] discuss how terrorists share their ideology and communicate with members on the "Dark Web" the reverse side of the Web used by terrorists. To improve understanding of terrorist activities from the web, the information is collected using searching, browsing and spidering.…”