Tracking and Monitoring E-mail Traffic Activities of Criminal and Terrorist Organisations Using Visualisation Tools
ABSTRACT
In defensive information operations, knowing about the actions or behaviour of the adversary is important for countering any attacks posed by the adversary. Obtaining information about the activities and behaviour of criminal or terrorist groups from electronic communication sources, such as e-mail, will be useful given that criminal or terrorists may utilise different electronic communication mediums to contact each of their agents or members. In this paper, the development of an e-mail traffic analyser system for analysing the interactions between different e-mail clients in the e-mail system is described. The different visualisation tools used and how the information provided by such tools would be useful to an intelligence analyst are discussed. The use of decision trees for locating ‘unusual’ e-mail traffic interactions and the type of information revealed via the technique is also described.
AUTHORS
School of Engineering, University of Tasmania
Australia
Mark J. Lim received his B.E. (Hons) from the University of Tasmania Australia, in 2003. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate and his major research interests are computer security and artificial intelligence. Mr Lim is a student member of the Institution of Engineers Australia and also a student member of the IEEE.
School of Engineering, University of Tasmania
Australia
Michael Negnevitsky received his B.S.E.E. (Hons), 1978, and Ph.D., 1983, from Byelorussian University of Technology, Belarus. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Tasmania, Australia. His major interests are computational intelligence, fuzzy logic, neural networks and genetic algorithms. Dr. Negnevitsky is a Chartered Professional Engineer, a Senior Member of the Institution of Engineers Australia, Member of the IEEE, and a Member of CIGRE AP36 (Electromagnetic Compatibility) Australian Technical Committee.
School of Computing, University of Tasmania
Australia
Jacqueline Hartnett has a B.A. (Hons) in Geography from Exeter University in the UK and a MComp from the University of Tasmania. After graduating, she worked with computing department of the Royal Dutch Shell group and IBM both in Australia and the UK. She has taught computer security courses in the University of Tasmania since 1993. Her current research interests are the use of authentication and access control as a means of maintaining privacy and confidentiality of personally identified data and the development of intrusion detection techniques for groups of collaborating network gateways.
Published In
Journal of Information Warfare
The definitive publication for the best and latest research and analysis on information warfare, information operations, and cyber crime. Available in traditional hard copy or online.
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