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

TLDR

The Web is a global communication platform, yet terrorists use the Dark Web to spread ideology, and information overload hampers comprehensive analysis of their activities. The study develops a novel methodology to collect and analyze Dark Web information to better understand terrorist activities. The methodology integrates collection, analysis, and visualization of diverse Web sources, applied to 39 Jihad sites to map content, relationships, and activity levels. Expert evaluation found the methodology useful and promising, with high potential to aid investigations, policymaking, and intelligence research on terrorist activities.

Abstract

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.