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• Social media companies should recognise the political importance of counterterrorist financing (CTF) by explicitly reflecting the priorities of the UN Security Council and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in their policies, strategies and transparency reports.
• Furthermore, social media companies identified as being at high risk of exploitation should update their terms of service and community standards to explicitly reference and outlaw terrorist financing (consistent with universally applicable international law and standards such as those of the FATF) and actions that contravene related UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions.
• Social media companies should clearly demonstrate that they understand and apply appropriate sanctions designations; at the same time, policymakers should ensure that sanctions designations include, where possible, information such as email addresses, IP addresses and social media handles that can support sanctions implementation by social media companies. The more granular the information provided by governments on designated entities, the more efficiently the private sector can comply with sanctions designations.
• Social media companies should more tightly control functionality to ensure that raising terrorist funding through social media videos, such as big-brand advertising and Super Chat payments, is disabled.
• Researchers and policymakers should avoid generalisations and make a clear distinction between forms of social media and the various terrorist-financing vulnerabilities that they pose, recognising the different types of platforms available, and the varied ways in which terrorist financiers could abuse them.
• Policymakers should encourage both inter-agency and cross-border collaboration on the threat of using social media for terrorist financing, ensuring that agencies involved are equipped with necessary social media investigative capabilities.
• International law enforcement agencies such as Interpol and Europol should facilitate the development of new investigation and prosecution standard operating procedures for engaging with operators of servers and cloud services based in overseas jurisdictions to ensure that necessary evidence can be gathered in a timely fashion. This would also encourage an internationally harmonised approach to using social media as financial intelligence.
• Policymakers should encourage the building of new, and leveraging of existing, public–private partnerships to ensure social media company CTF efforts are informed and effective.

This briefing outlines research uncovering thousands of users viewing extremist content in Arabic language across mainstream social platforms including Facebook and YouTube. The findings emerged as world leaders, policymakers, and technology companies gathered in Jordan earlier this month to discuss counter-terrorism and extremism as part of the Aqaba Process and the convening of the Global Internet Forum for Countering Terrorism (GIFCT).

Researchers identified:

• More than 77 pieces of Arabic content promoting influential Islamist extremists from al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as well as affiliates for both organizations, and precursors to both groups on both YouTube and Facebook;
• More than 275,000 users have watched the videos on both Facebook and YouTube;
• The research finds evidence of Islamist extremist supporters sharing content between sites, spreading the content further than their primary YouTube Channels and/or Facebook pages and groups. Approximately 138 individual users have shared links from the YouTube to their networks on Facebook.

Nick Drnaso’s graphic novel Sabrina provides a powerful snapshot of online norms. The picture is not pretty. A young woman goes missing. Her grief-struck boyfriend cannot bear to stay in their home and escapes to a friend’s house. Her sister struggles with the pain of her loss. We learn that the woman’s neighbor, a misogynist loner, killed her and recorded the murder. Online, people clamor for the video. The execution video leaks and goes viral. The media hounds the woman’s sister and her boyfriend. A conspiracy theorist with a popular radio show argues that the murder is a deep-state hoax. He gins up a cyber mob to “investigate” what is really going on. A cyber mob descends. The woman’s family, boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s friend are smeared as crisis actors. They are barraged with death threats, and their personal information is posted far and wide. The attacks continue until a shooting massacre captures the conspiracy theorist’s attention. The cyber mob redirects its wrath at other mourners. The novel raises important questions about the interaction of human behavior, culture, and law in the digital age. What compels people to like, click, and share grotesque execution videos, conspiracy theories, and destructive falsehoods? We have always been drawn to information that resonates with us, but the online environment seems to supercharge human biases. Why? Platforms structure and shape online activity, so what are they doing about online abuse? Each and every one of us is ultimately responsible for liking, clicking, and sharing the destruction. How can we work to change our behavior?

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the design, application and findings of a case study in which the application of a machine learning algorithm is utilised to identify the grievances in Twitter in an Arabian context. To understand the characteristics of the Twitter users who expressed the identified grievances, data mining techniques and social network analysis were utilised. The study extracted a total of 23,363 tweets and these were stored as a data set. The machine learning algorithm applied to this data set was followed by utilising a data mining process to explore the characteristics of the Twitter feed users. The network of the users was mapped and the individual level of interactivity and network density were calculated. Findings The machine learning algorithm revealed 12 themes all of which were underpinned by the coalition of Arab countries blockade of Qatar. The data mining analysis revealed that the tweets could be clustered in three clusters, the main cluster included users with a large number of followers and friends but who did not mention other users in their tweets. The social network analysis revealed that whilst a large proportion of users engaged in direct messages with others, the network ties between them were not registered as strong. Borum (2011) notes that invoking grievances is the first step in the radicalisation process. It is hoped that by understanding these grievances, the study will shed light on what radical groups could invoke to win the sympathy of aggrieved people. In combination, the machine learning algorithm offered insights into the grievances expressed within the tweets in an Arabian context. The data mining and the social network analyses revealed the characteristics of the Twitter users highlighting identifying and managing early intervention of radicalisation.

This thesis concerns the possibility of deceiving cyberterrorists using defensive deception methods. As cyberspace today is a battleground for myriad cyber attacks and intrusions, it may only be a matter of time before terrorists choose to advance their deadly cause in cyberspace. We explore some of the questions raised regarding the threat of cyberterrorism by examining different perspectives, motivations, actors, targets, and how they may be confronted. One way is to draw from the lessons of deception and apply them against cyberterrorist attacks. Cyber deception applies in cyberspace just as well as deception in military battles. From the different categories of attackers that could perpetrate cyberterrorism, we examine the ways in which they may be deceived. Many of the methods and tools that cyberterrorists would use are similar to those used by other less malicious hackers, so we can plan specific deceptions to use against them in advance.

This study researches the varying threats that emanate from terrorists who carry their activity into the online arena. It examines several elements of this threat. First, it explores elements of virtual to virtual attacks. Second, it looks at threats against critical infrastructures that can be traced to online sources. Third, this thesis reports on ways that terrorists are using information technology such as the Internet for propaganda and communication purposes. Finally, it highlights the most crucial ways in which the United States government has responded to the problem. It concludes with a few recommendations for best practices for future engagement with varying aspects of cyberterrorism.