Virtual vignettes: the acquisition, analysis, and presentation of social network data

Abstract

Online social networks (OSNs) are immensely prevalent and have now become a ubiquitous and important part of the modern, developed society. However, online social networks pose significant problems to digital forensic investigators who have no experience online. Data will reside on multiples of servers in multiple countries, across multiple jurisdictions. Capturing it before it is overwritten or deleted is a known problem, mirrored in other cloud based services. In this article, a novel method has been developed for the extraction, analysis, visualization, and comparison of snapshotted user profile data from the online social network Twitter. The research follows a process of design, implementation, simulation, and experimentation. Source code of the tool that was developed to facilitate data extraction has been made available on the Internet.