Illicit bits: Detecting and analyzing contraband networks in massively multiplayer online games

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, Brian Keegan, Sophia Sullivan, Dmitri Williams, Jaideep Srivastava, Noshir Contractor

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although trade in illicit items and services is prevalent in many economic systems, collecting reliable data and making empirical claims about this activity is difficult. Using anonymized behavioral logs from a massively multiplayer online game, we analyze the items exchanged by players later banned for gold farming. We simultaneously analyze clandestine social networks of deviant players in MMOGs as well the network of contraband items that are sold by these players. The insights from the network analysis are used to build predictive models for identifying deviant players in the clandestine networks. We show that the results obtained from our proposed approach are far superior to the state of the art for such clandestine networks. Additionally we observed that the contraband networks contain certain type of objects which are not found in their "normal" counterparts.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2011 IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust and IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, PASSAT/SocialCom 2011
Pages127-134
Number of pages8
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011
Event2011 IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust, PASSAT 2011 and 2011 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, SocialCom 2011 - Boston, MA, United States
Duration: Oct 9 2011Oct 11 2011

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2011 IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust and IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, PASSAT/SocialCom 2011

Other

Other2011 IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust, PASSAT 2011 and 2011 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, SocialCom 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoston, MA
Period10/9/1110/11/11

Keywords

  • Clandestine network
  • Contraband network
  • Gold farm
  • Massively multiplayer online game
  • Multiple consignment contraband

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