Social Media Overt Covert Reaction Network

Brief summary

This research article talks about what we call a Social Media Overt Covert Reaction Network (SOCReN). This is a hidden network of people established solely through social media post reaction emojis. In this paper we talk about how it was discovered, it’s characteristics, ways to currently detect it, and who would find this information useful. Those that may find this paper useful include those that may fall in the following categories/roles/professions: Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), law enforcement, journalists, legal teams, brand protection, or research. Those who are personally impacted by online harassment would also find this information beneficial.

Later on in the paper, we talk about how a bad actor can use the SOCReN to covertly, while in public, send and receive communications. This section focuses on the use of steganography and social steganography to achieve sending messages under the radar using social media post reaction emojis.

The paper ends with problems and issues we encountered, or observed, as well as questions we have.

View and Download Paper

Bsquared Intel Social Media Overt Covert Reaction Network – SOCReN

Connections we are looking for

We are looking to connect with the following people to further learn more:

• Law enforcement at the local, State, and Federal level
• Those whose titles are along the lines of threat intelligence, threat detection, or user safety, or similar at Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), LinkedIn, or other large social media platforms.
• OSINT, CTI, and Information Security professionals.

Updates

11/21/24: Thanks to some helpful feedback, and with social media platform Bluesky meeting our criteria for a SOCReN, an updated version of the research is in the works. ETA currently unknown.

Reach out

Use the contact form below to reach out. We’d love to hear what you learned or if you can help further educate us. Lastly, we’d love to hear from you if you’ve run into a SOCReN during your research and what you can share about it.