Math for Security

5 Identifying Threats with Social Network Analysis

Social network analysis (SNA) is a subset of graph theory that describes complex human interactions mathematically; it can be used in any research where human interaction is a factor. Security researchers use SNA for everything from predicting the spread of malicious content to identifying potential insider threats. We’ll do our own SNA in this chapter: we’ll build a humble social network graph from Mastodon posts, then use it to understand influence and information exchange among users. Specifically, we’ll be looking at a real social network effect known as the small-world phenomenon. Then ...