The Experts below are selected from a list of 144 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Shalin Hai-jew - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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In Plaintext
The Dark Web, 2018Co-Authors: Shalin Hai-jewAbstract:People have long gone online to groom their online identities, to communicate some aspects of themselves in the real. The information shared is purposive and strategic. Inevitably, the information is selective and incomplete. The cyber may evoke something about the physical only to a degree, in the cyber-physical confluence. In an asymmetrical information environment, those who have the most accurate and requisite information often have the advantage. It is said that much of intelligence is conducted using Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), which suggests a need for reading between the lines of publicly released information; indeed, much of life is conducted in online public spaces. A number of tools enable the extraction and analysis of information from public sites. When used in combination, these tools may create a fairly clear sense of the online presences of various individuals or organizations or networks online for increased transparency. This chapter describes some of the tools (Maltego Radium™ and Network Overview, Discovery, and Exploration for Excel/NodeXL™) that may be used to increase the knowability of others in the creation of various profiles. This includes some light applications of “inference attacks” based on publicly available information. Further information may be captured from the Hidden Web through tools designed to crawl that understructure, and this potential is addressed a little as well.
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Real-Time Sentiment Analysis of Microblog Messages with the Maltego “Tweet Analyzer” Machine
Social Media Listening and Monitoring for Business Applications, 2017Co-Authors: Shalin Hai-jewAbstract:For social media to work as a “human sensor network” or a relevant source for “eventgraphing” for some fast-moving events, it is important to be capture real-time and locational information. It may help to not only capture information from a particular social media platform but from across the Web. In such a context, Maltego Carbon 3.5.3/Chlorine 3.6.0's Tweet Analyser “machine” (with AlchemyAPI built-in) and used in combination with other “transforms,” may serve the purpose—at least for initial and iterated sampling of the related messaging. This tool may be used to capture information from social media accounts.. social media accounts, linked URLs, geolocational information, and other information of research value. Maltego is an open-access tool with a community version and a proprietary commercial version available by subscription. Maltego Chlorine's Tweet Analyzer has a built-in sentiment analysis feature.
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Exploring Public Perceptions of Native-Born American Emigration Abroad and Renunciation of American Citizenship through Social Media
Social Media Listening and Monitoring for Business Applications, 2017Co-Authors: Shalin Hai-jewAbstract:There has been little work done on American emigration abroad and even less done on the formal renunciation of American citizenship. This chapter provides an overview of both phenomena in the research literature and then provides some methods for using the extraction of social media data and their visualization as a way of tapping into the public mindsets about these social phenomena. The software tools used include the following: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL Basic), NVivo, and Maltego Carbon; the social media platforms used include the following: Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr.
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Connecting Related Online Elements with Maltego Carbon 3.5.3™: Six Use Cases for Higher Education
Developing Successful Strategies for Global Policies and Cyber Transparency in E-Learning, 2016Co-Authors: Shalin Hai-jewAbstract:With so much of modern life conducted in online spaces, understanding what is knowable through those spaces is a critical aspect of digital literacy and informational awareness. To increase online transparency, Maltego Carbon 3.5.3 (a penetration testing tool) enables powerful exploration of the Surface Web through its “machines” and “transforms.” Maltego enables the exploration of the interconnections between disparate pieces of online information (including technological understructures, documents, aliases, images, phrases, email addresses, telephone numbers, social media accounts, and geographical location coordinates. In the educational context, this tool may be applied in a number of ways. This chapter summarizes six generic “use cases”: Use Case 1: Understanding an Online / Offline Entity; Use Case 2: Exploring a Domain; Use Case 3: From Physical Location to Cyber and Back Again; Use Case 4: Online Conversations on Social Media Sites; Use Case 5: Eventgraphing: Mapping an Event Online, and Use Case 6: Finding Leads to Enhance Research.
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Sampling Public Sentiment Using Related Tags (and User-Created Content) Networks from Social Media Platforms
Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with Technology, 2015Co-Authors: Shalin Hai-jewAbstract:The broad popularity of social content-sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube have enabled the public to access a variety of photographs and videos on a wide range of topics. In addition to these resources, some new capabilities in multiple software programs enable the extraction of related tags networks from these collections. Related tags networks are relational contents built on the descriptive metadata created by the creators of the digital contents. This chapter offers some insights on how to understand public sentiment (inferentially and analytically) from related tags and content networks from social media platforms. This indirect approach contributes to Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) with nuanced information (and some pretty tight limits about assertions and generalizability). The software tools explored for related tags data extractions include Network Overview, Discovery, and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL) (an open-source graph visualization tool which is an add-in to Microsoft Excel), NCapture in NVivo 10 (a commercial qualitative data analysis tool), and Maltego Tungsten (a commercial penetration-testing Internet-network-extraction tool formerly known as Maltego Radium).
Nitin Agarwal - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Studying the Weaponization of Social Media: Case Studies of Anti-NATO Disinformation Campaigns
Lecture Notes in Social Networks, 2020Co-Authors: Katrin Galeano, Rick Galeano, Samer Al-khateeb, Nitin AgarwalAbstract:Social media provides a fertile ground for any user to find or share information about various events with others. At the same time, social media is not always used for benign purposes. With the availability of inexpensive and ubiquitous mass communication tools, disseminating false information and propaganda is both convenient and effective. In this research, we studied Online Deviant Groups (ODGs) that conduct cyber propaganda campaigns in order to achieve strategic and political goals, influence mass thinking, and steer behaviors or perspectives about an event. We provide case studies in which various disinformation and propaganda swamped social media during two NATO exercises in 2015. We demonstrate ODGs’ capability to spread anti-NATO propaganda using a highly sophisticated and well-coordinated social media campaign. In particular, blogs were used as virtual spaces where narratives are framed. And, to generate discourse, web traffic was driven to these virtual spaces via other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and VKontakte. By further examining the information flows within the social media networks, we identify sources of mis/disinformation and their reach, i.e., how far and how quickly the mis/disinformation could travel and consequently detect manipulation. The chapter presents an in-depth examination of the information networks using social network analysis (SNA) and social cyber forensics (SCF) based methodologies to identify prominent information brokers, leading coordinators, and information competitors who seek to further their own agenda. Through SCF tools, e.g., Maltego, we extract metadata associated with disinformation-riddled websites. The extracted metadata helps in uncovering the implicit relations among various ODGs. We further collected the social network of various ODGs (i.e., their friends and followers) and their communication network (i.e., network depicting the flow of information such as tweets, retweets, mentions, and hyperlinks). SNA helped us identify influential users and powerful groups responsible for coordinating the various disinformation campaigns. One of the key research findings is the vitality of the link between blogs and other social media platforms to examine disinformation campaigns.
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social cyber forensics leveraging open source information and social network analysis to advance cyber security informatics
Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 2019Co-Authors: Samer Alkhateeb, Nitin AgarwalAbstract:In this paper, we introduce the concept of social cyber forensics and its usability. Then, we introduce a tool, i.e., Maltego that can be used to study the cross-media affiliation and uncover hidden relations among various online groups. We also provide three stepwise methodologies that leverage Maltego and various open source information to uncover the hidden relationship among (1) Twitter accounts and a set of websites/blogs; (2) websites/blogs and other websites/blogs; or (3) infer the ownership of a set of websites/blogs. These methodologies have been tested during many cyber propaganda campaigns that were projected against NATO forces. A high-level view of these case studies that leveraged the concepts and methodologies provided in this paper are briefly highlighted here while the details of each case were published in various venues which are pointed out for interested readers.
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social cyber forensics scf uncovering hidden relationships
2019Co-Authors: Samer Alkhateeb, Nitin AgarwalAbstract:In this chapter, we will introduce the concept of social cyber forensics (SCF) and its usability. Then, we will introduce a tool, i.e., Maltego that can be used to study the cross-media affiliation and uncover hidden relations among different ODGs . In Sect. 4.2 we will provide three stepwise methodologies that can be followed to reach the desired outcome of analysis (e.g., uncovering the hidden relationship between Twitter accounts and a set of websites or blog sites, websites or blog sites and other websites or blog sites, and infer the ownership of a set of websites or blog sites). These methodologies have been tested during many cyber propaganda campaigns to associate and infer the relationships between different online groups. We also provide hands-on exercises to practice each of the methodologies introduced.
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leveraging social network analysis and cyber forensics approaches to study cyber propaganda campaigns
2019Co-Authors: Samer Alkhateeb, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, Nitin AgarwalAbstract:In today’s information technology age, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens. Further, with the availability of inexpensive and ubiquitous mass communication tools like social media, disseminating false information and propaganda is both convenient and effective. Groups use social media to coordinate cyber propaganda campaigns in order to achieve strategic and political goals, influence mass thinking, and steer behaviors or perspectives about an event. In this research, we study the online deviant groups (ODGs) who created a lot of cyber propaganda that were projected against the NATO’s Trident Juncture Exercise 2015 (TRJE 2015) on both Twitter and blogs. Anti-NATO narratives were observed on social media websites that got stronger as the TRJE 2015 event approached. Call for civil disobedience, planned protests, and direct action against TRJE 2015 propagated on social media websites. We employ computational social network analysis and cyber forensics informed methodologies to study information competitors who seek to take the initiative and the strategic message away from NATO in order to further their own agenda. Through social cyber forensics tools, e.g., Maltego, we extract metadata associated with propaganda-riddled websites. The extracted metadata helps in the collection of social network information (i.e., friends and followers) and communication network information (i.e., network depicting the flow of information such as tweets, retweets, mentions, and hyperlinks). Through computational social network analysis, we identify influential users and powerful groups (or the focal structures) coordinating the cyber propaganda campaigns. The study examines 21 blogs having over 18,000 blog posts dating back to 1997 and over 9000 Twitter users for the period between August 3, 2014, and September 12, 2015. These blogs were identified, crawled, and stored in our database that is accessible through the Blogtrackers tool. Blogtrackers tool further helped us identify the activity patterns of blogs, keyword patterns, and the influence a blog or a blogger has on the community, and analyze the sentiment diffusion in the community.
Hai-jew Shalin - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Profiling an Entity across Multiple Social Media Platforms
ScholarSpace @ JCCC, 2016Co-Authors: Hai-jew ShalinAbstract:This work summarizes how to use Maltego, NVivo 10, and NodeXL to capture information about entities in social networks
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Circular Area to Hyper-Local Tweets using Maltego Chlorine 3.6.1
ScholarSpace @ JCCC, 2016Co-Authors: Hai-jew ShalinAbstract:This work shows how microblogging messages may be captured from a physical geographical region for interpretation using Maltego Chlorine 3.6.1
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Mapping Cyberspace to Physical Space (in a Few Easy Steps)
ScholarSpace @ JCCC, 2015Co-Authors: Hai-jew ShalinAbstract:The author describes the uses of Maltego™ tools to map cyberspace to physical space
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Using Maltego Tungsten to explore the cyber-physical confluence in geolocation
ScholarSpace @ JCCC, 2014Co-Authors: Hai-jew ShalinAbstract:Ever wonder how to map parts of cyberspace (the Surface Web) with the physical world? Maltego Tungsten™ (v. 3.4.0) is a high-end (penetration testing) tool that maps physical locations to cyber ones, and vice versa. Maltego Tungsten (formerly Maltego Radium) enables the identification of various types of location data: GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates, locations to cities/states/countries, and more precise geo-locations. Physical location data may be identified for accounts on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and others), websites, disambiguated names (even aliases), and other online data. The findings are presented in dynamic and static visual graphs and data tables. The information collected is all publicly available data referred to as “open-source intelligence”. This presentation will show how to move from the physical to the electronic and the electronic to the physical
Samer Alkhateeb - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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social cyber forensics leveraging open source information and social network analysis to advance cyber security informatics
Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 2019Co-Authors: Samer Alkhateeb, Nitin AgarwalAbstract:In this paper, we introduce the concept of social cyber forensics and its usability. Then, we introduce a tool, i.e., Maltego that can be used to study the cross-media affiliation and uncover hidden relations among various online groups. We also provide three stepwise methodologies that leverage Maltego and various open source information to uncover the hidden relationship among (1) Twitter accounts and a set of websites/blogs; (2) websites/blogs and other websites/blogs; or (3) infer the ownership of a set of websites/blogs. These methodologies have been tested during many cyber propaganda campaigns that were projected against NATO forces. A high-level view of these case studies that leveraged the concepts and methodologies provided in this paper are briefly highlighted here while the details of each case were published in various venues which are pointed out for interested readers.
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social cyber forensics scf uncovering hidden relationships
2019Co-Authors: Samer Alkhateeb, Nitin AgarwalAbstract:In this chapter, we will introduce the concept of social cyber forensics (SCF) and its usability. Then, we will introduce a tool, i.e., Maltego that can be used to study the cross-media affiliation and uncover hidden relations among different ODGs . In Sect. 4.2 we will provide three stepwise methodologies that can be followed to reach the desired outcome of analysis (e.g., uncovering the hidden relationship between Twitter accounts and a set of websites or blog sites, websites or blog sites and other websites or blog sites, and infer the ownership of a set of websites or blog sites). These methodologies have been tested during many cyber propaganda campaigns to associate and infer the relationships between different online groups. We also provide hands-on exercises to practice each of the methodologies introduced.
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leveraging social network analysis and cyber forensics approaches to study cyber propaganda campaigns
2019Co-Authors: Samer Alkhateeb, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, Nitin AgarwalAbstract:In today’s information technology age, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens. Further, with the availability of inexpensive and ubiquitous mass communication tools like social media, disseminating false information and propaganda is both convenient and effective. Groups use social media to coordinate cyber propaganda campaigns in order to achieve strategic and political goals, influence mass thinking, and steer behaviors or perspectives about an event. In this research, we study the online deviant groups (ODGs) who created a lot of cyber propaganda that were projected against the NATO’s Trident Juncture Exercise 2015 (TRJE 2015) on both Twitter and blogs. Anti-NATO narratives were observed on social media websites that got stronger as the TRJE 2015 event approached. Call for civil disobedience, planned protests, and direct action against TRJE 2015 propagated on social media websites. We employ computational social network analysis and cyber forensics informed methodologies to study information competitors who seek to take the initiative and the strategic message away from NATO in order to further their own agenda. Through social cyber forensics tools, e.g., Maltego, we extract metadata associated with propaganda-riddled websites. The extracted metadata helps in the collection of social network information (i.e., friends and followers) and communication network information (i.e., network depicting the flow of information such as tweets, retweets, mentions, and hyperlinks). Through computational social network analysis, we identify influential users and powerful groups (or the focal structures) coordinating the cyber propaganda campaigns. The study examines 21 blogs having over 18,000 blog posts dating back to 1997 and over 9000 Twitter users for the period between August 3, 2014, and September 12, 2015. These blogs were identified, crawled, and stored in our database that is accessible through the Blogtrackers tool. Blogtrackers tool further helped us identify the activity patterns of blogs, keyword patterns, and the influence a blog or a blogger has on the community, and analyze the sentiment diffusion in the community.
Nutan Kumar Panda - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Hacking Web Intelligence: Open Source Intelligence and Web Reconnaissance Concepts and Techniques
2015Co-Authors: Sudhanshu Chauhan, Nutan Kumar PandaAbstract:Open source intelligence (OSINT) and web reconnaissance are rich topics for infosec professionals looking for the best ways to sift through the abundance of information widely available online. In many cases, the first stage of any security assessment-that is, reconnaissance-is not given enough attention by security professionals, hackers, and penetration testers. Often, the information openly present is as critical as the confidential data. Hacking Web Intelligence shows you how to dig into the Web and uncover the information many don't even know exists. The book takes a holistic approach that is not only about using tools to find information online but also how to link all the information and transform it into presentable and actionable intelligence. You will also learn how to secure your information online to prevent it being discovered by these reconnaissance methods. Hacking Web Intelligence is an in-depth technical reference covering the methods and techniques you need to unearth open source information from the Internet and utilize it for the purpose of targeted attack during a security assessment. This book will introduce you to many new and leading-edge reconnaissance, information gathering, and open source intelligence methods and techniques, including metadata extraction tools, advanced search engines, advanced browsers, power searching methods, online anonymity tools such as TOR and i2p, OSINT tools such as Maltego, Shodan, Creepy, Search Diggity, Recon-ng, Social Network Analysis (SNA), Darkweb/Deepweb, data visualization, and much more. Provides a holistic approach to OSINT and Web recon, showing you how to fit all the data together into actionable intelligence Focuses on hands-on tools such as TOR, i2p, Maltego, Shodan, Creepy, Search Diggity, Recon-ng, FOCA, EXIF, Metagoofil, MAT, and many more Covers key technical topics such as metadata searching, advanced browsers and power searching, online anonymity, Darkweb / Deepweb, Social Network Analysis (SNA), and how to manage, analyze, and visualize the data you gather Includes hands-on technical examples and case studies, as well as a Python chapter that shows you how to create your own information-gathering tools and modify existing APIs
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Quick and Dirty Python
Hacking Web Intelligence, 2015Co-Authors: Sudhanshu Chauhan, Nutan Kumar PandaAbstract:It need not to be proved that automated tools are very helpful in performing various tasks. We have already discussed about a lot of such tools in previous chapters. Here we will be taking a step further to learn the basics of Python language to create our own custom tools for custom requirements. We will start with the learning about the essential components and then move on to create our own scripts, as committed in a previous chapter we will also use it to create transforms for our beloved Maltego.
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Case Studies and Examples
Hacking Web Intelligence, 2015Co-Authors: Sudhanshu Chauhan, Nutan Kumar PandaAbstract:In this chapter we will combine the knowledge we have gained in previous chapters to learn how to utilize it for practical usage. We will talk about different scenarios and examples and through those try to generate an understanding of which tool/technique would be useful in what situation and how to hop from one to another. Later in the chapter we will also learn how to create Maltego machines, which can prove very helpful when we need to perform various transforms on one entity or in sequence.