The Social Organization of a Criminal Hacker Network: A Case Study

摘要

Financial fraud and identity theft conducted by criminal hackers have become the top source of the greatest financial losses for organizations. Even though Hacker groups are complex socio-technical systems, much extant research on hackers is conducted at the individual level of analysis. This research proposes a research model composed of five dimensions and their relations in order to study hacker's social organization in the whole socio-technical context. Based on this model, the researcher applies network analysis methods to disclose the structure and patterns of a significant and complex hacker group, Shadowcrew. Network analysis tools, such as Automap and ORA, are applied for data processing and data analysis. Three network measures: degree centrality, cognitive demand, and eigenvector centrality, are utilized to determine the critical leaders. Out-degree centrality is employed to analyze the relations among the five dimensions in the research model.