Examining the use of botnets and their evolution in propaganda dissemination.

Abstract

Social media is increasingly used to communicate strategic information during crises and to enable authorities to act tactfully. Numerous journalistic accounts have highlighted the prolific and disturbing use of social media by deviant groups among state and non-state actors to influence public opinion and provoke hysteria among citizens through disseminating misinformation or propaganda about various influential events such as the 2014 Crimean Water Crisis or the 2015 Dragoon Ride Exercise. We study the strategic communication used by deviant groups within the social media ecosystem, especially examining the cross-influence between blogs and Twitter. We have collected and analysed data from blogs and Twitter during the two aforementioned events. Our study shows that networked computers running automated and coordinated programs to perform specific tasks, or ‘botnets’ have been extensively used during the two events, greatly increasing the dissemination of propaganda. Furthermore, the behaviours of these botnets are becoming increasingly sophisticated over time, both from the perspective of information dissemination as well as coordination. The evolving behaviours of botnets make them elusive, even to state-of-the-art detection techniques, warranting more sophisticated botnet detection methodologies. In this study, we present methodologies informed by social science and computational network analysis to study the information dissemination and coordination behaviours of botnets and to aid the development of detection tools ready for deployment in cyber operations. Keywords: