Physical, technological, and social networks are often at risk of intentional attack. Despite the wide-spanning importance of network vulnerability, very little is known about how criminal networks ...respond to attacks or whether intentional attacks affect criminal activity in the long-run. To assess criminal network responsiveness, we designed an empirically-grounded agent-based simulation using population-level network data on 16,847 illicit drug exchanges between 7,295 users of an active darknet drug market and statistical methods for simulation analysis. We consider three attack strategies: targeted attacks that delete structurally integral vertices, weak link attacks that delete large numbers of weakly connected vertices, and signal attacks that saturate the network with noisy signals. Results reveal that, while targeted attacks are effective when conducted at a large-scale, weak link and signal attacks deter more potential drug transactions and buyers when only a small portion of the network is attacked. We also find that intentional attacks affect network behavior. When networks are attacked, actors grow more cautious about forging ties, connecting less frequently and only to trustworthy alters. Operating in tandem, these two processes undermine long-term network robustness and increase network vulnerability to future attacks.
Online Illegal Cryptomarkets Haynie, Dana L.; Duxbury, Scott W.
Annual review of sociology,
08/2024, Letnik:
50, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Cryptomarkets—online markets for illegal goods—have revolutionized the illegal drug trade, constituting about 10% of all drug trades and attracting users to a greater variety of and more addictive ...substances than available in offline drug markets. This review introduces the burgeoning area of sociology research on illegal cryptomarkets, particularly in the realm of drug trade. We emphasize the expanding role of illicit online trade and its relevance for understanding broader exchange challenges encountered in all illegal trade settings. Examining the effects of online illegal trade on consumption and supply-side policing, we also discuss the harm and potential benefits of moving drug exchange from offline to online markets. We argue for a network perspective's efficacy in this research domain, emphasizing its relevance in assessing trade and discussion networks, technical innovation, and market evolution and vulnerabilities. Concluding, we outline future research areas, including market culture, failure, and the impact of online illegal trade on stratification.
Abstract
While economic sociology research and theory argue that excessive network embeddedness depresses competition in illegal markets, prior research does not examine how distinct types of ...embeddedness may have asymmetric effects on the diversity of purchasing behavior—the range of illegal goods that buyers typically purchase. This study considers how network embeddedness can positively or negatively affect drug purchasing diversity in online drug markets by referring buyers to new vendors or “locking” buyers into recurrent trade for the same products. We analyze novel network data on 16,847 illegal drug exchanges between 7205 actors on one online illegal drug market. Consistent with hypothesized network asymmetry, buyers are more likely to purchase a new type of drug when the transaction is part of an indirect network referral. Although histories of exchange increase the overall frequency of drug purchasing, they are associated with decreases in new drug-type purchases. In the aggregate, these processes either contribute to an integrated market where buyers purchase multiple drugs from multiple vendors (in the case of referrals) or a fragmented market characterized by recurrent trade from the same vendors for the same substances (in the case of repeated trade). We discuss the implications of these findings for research on embeddedness, illegal markets, risky exchange, and drug policy.
Researchers have examined selection and influence processes in shaping delinquency similarity among friends, but little is known about the role of gender in moderating these relationships. Our ...objective is to examine differences between adolescent boys and girls regarding delinquency‐based selection and influence processes. Using longitudinal network data from adolescents attending two large schools in AddHealth (N = 1,857) and stochastic actor‐oriented models, we evaluate whether girls are influenced to a greater degree by friends’ violence or delinquency than boys (influence hypothesis) and whether girls are more likely to select friends based on violent or delinquent behavior than boys (selection hypothesis). The results indicate that girls are more likely than boys to be influenced by their friends’ involvement in violence. Although a similar pattern emerges for nonviolent delinquency, the gender differences are not significant. Some evidence shows that boys are influenced toward increasing their violence or delinquency when exposed to more delinquent or violent friends but are immune to reducing their violence or delinquency when associating with less violent or delinquent friends. In terms of selection dynamics, although both boys and girls have a tendency to select friends based on friends’ behavior, girls have a stronger tendency to do so, suggesting that among girls, friends’ involvement in violence or delinquency is an especially decisive factor for determining friendship ties.
Haynie examines whether structural properties of friendship networks condition the association between friends' delinquency and an individual's own delinquent behavior. The findings suggest that it ...is necessary to consider the underlying structural properties of friendship networks in order to understand the impact of peer influence on adolescent delinquency.
Criminal networks are frequently at risk of disruption through arrest and interorganizational violence. Difficulties in designing empirical studies of criminal network recovery, however, have ...problematized research into network responses to disruption. In this study, we evaluate criminal network resilience by examining network recovery from disruption in an array of different criminal networks and across different disruption strategies. We use an agent‐based model to evaluate how criminal networks recover from disruption. Our results reveal the vulnerabilities and time to recovery of numerous criminal organizations, and through them, we identify which disruption strategies are most effective at damaging various criminal networks.
This paper examines the contribution of peer relations to delinquency from the perspective of two sociological traditions: socialization/normative influence and opportunity. Earlier studies have ...likely overestimated normative influence by relying on respondents' reports about their friends' behaviors rather than obtaining independent assessments and by inadequately controlling for the tendency to select peers who are similar to oneself Using detailed social network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Healthy we find support for both the socialization and opportunity models. Adolescents engage in higher rates of delinquency if they have highly delinquent friends and if they spend a great deal of time in unstructured socializing with friends. Yet our results also indicate that (1) the normative influence of peers on delinquency is more limited than indicated by most previous studies, (2) normative influence is not increased by being more closely attached to friends or spending more time with them, (3) the contribution of opportunity is independent from normative influence and of comparable importance, and (4) influences from the peer domain do not mediate the influences of age, gender, family or school.
Objectives
The current study is the first to examine the network structure of an encrypted online drug distribution network. It examines (1) the global network structure, (2) the local network ...structure, and (3) identifies those vendor characteristics that best explain variation in the network structure. In doing so, it evaluates the role of trust in online drug markets.
Methods
The study draws on a unique dataset of transaction level data from an encrypted online drug market. Structural measures and community detection analysis are used to characterize and investigate the network structure. Exponential random graph modeling is used to evaluate which vendor characteristics explain variation in purchasing patterns.
Results
Vendors’ trustworthiness explains more variation in the overall network structure than the affordability of vendor products or the diversity of vendor product listings. This results in a highly localized network structure with a few key vendors accounting for most transactions.
Conclusions
The results indicate that vendors’ trustworthiness is a better predictor of vendor selection than product diversity or affordability. These results illuminate the internal market dynamics that sustain digital drug markets and highlight the importance of examining how new anonymizing technologies shape global drug distribution networks.
Abstract
Although economic sociology emphasizes the role of social networks for shaping economic action, little research has examined how network governance structures affect prices in the ...unregulated and high-risk social context of online criminal trade. We consider how overembeddedness—a state of excessive interconnectedness among market actors—arises from endogenous trade relations to shape prices in illegal online markets with aggregate consequences for short-term gross illegal revenue. Drawing on transaction-level data on 16 847 illegal drug transactions over 14 months of trade in a ‘darknet’ drug market, we assess how repeated exchanges and closure in buyer–vendor trade networks nonlinearly influence prices and short-term gross revenue from illegal drug trade. Using a series of panel models, we find that increases in closure and repeated exchange raise prices until a threshold is reached upon which prices and gross monthly revenue begin to decline as networks become overembedded. Findings provide insight into the network determinants of prices and gross monthly revenue in illegal online drug trade and illustrate how network structure shapes prices in criminal markets, even in anonymous trade environments.
•The online opioid distribution network in this study has a scale-free topology.•Buyers exhibit preferential attachment towards trustworthy vendors.•Network robustness to disruption is ...evaluated.•Active subgraphs are more resilient to disruption than the aggregate network.•Broker removal has the greatest disruptive effect on the network.
Drug distributors are increasingly turning to online markets to deliver and procure illegal drugs. Online venues allow drug vendors to span broad audiences, reshape organizational structure, and remain relatively anonymous. Such trends raise fundamental questions regarding the structural robustness, topological characteristics, and tie formation patterns in online drug distribution networks. We examine one online illegal opioid transaction network. We characterize the network’s topology, evaluate selection dynamics that sustain and facilitate the growth of the drug market, and investigate network vulnerability. Results support the existence of trust-based preferential attachment and give insight to how the network reacts to disruption.
PDF
