A Literature Review: Analyzing Social Network Security & Privacy

This literature review analyzes twelve articles focusing on security and privacy in online social networks (OSNs). It examines various methodologies and techniques for data gathering and fact-finding, reflecting scholars' viewpoints on security issues and potential solutions. The review covers security threats in OSNs, including privacy breaches, third-party application vulnerabilities, and client-server architecture weaknesses. It highlights research on privacy protection mechanisms, such as Facebook's security model and Social Privacy Protector architecture. Furthermore, the review addresses challenges related to data security, cyber attacks, and the role of firewalls in network security. It explores ethical concerns, threat models, and the importance of user awareness in protecting personal information on social media platforms. The analyzed research collectively emphasizes the need for robust security measures and user empowerment to mitigate risks in the evolving landscape of online social networking.

Introduction:
This Assignment will emphasise on the basis of the collection of 12 articles based on
“Analyzing Social Network Security and Privacy”. The following 12 articles will help to
analyze and research the various methodologies and techniques which are going to be used
for the intention of data gathering, fact-finding. In this report, these 12 articles will also
reflect the viewpoint of the scholars and various security issues in online social network and
their possible solutions.
Main Body:
Security Issues in Online Social Networks (Hongyu Gao, Jun HU, Tuo Huang, Jingnan
Wang and Yan Chen, 2011)
This research has been done to analyse the present security threats in online social networks
and available tools and mechanisms to overcome online threat that arises during social
networks activities. This research also highlights various kinds of security threats present
while doing social networking activities. In this research security threats in online social
networks has been categories into four groups and try to find out the appropriate system and
mechanism to reduce or overcome the security threat. In this research, the authors discussed
every individual category and analyze the relations between the different security issues
involved. This research also focuses on privacy and security breach attacks which are very
common threats in online social networks. Other than this a brief analysis of the security
breaches has been done which has been formed on behalf of serviced provider which includes
client-server architecture and responsibility of the service provider to protect the security of
individual’s privacy.
The researcher has discussed and proposed various alternative OSN architectures for the
defence purpose during online networking activities. Other than security breaches by the
service provider, user’s security breaches and third-party application security breaches are
also explained (Gao, et, al, 2011).

Social Privacy Protector - Protecting Users’ Privacy in Social Networks (Michael Fire,
Dima Kagan, Aviad Elishar, and Yuval Elovici, 2012)
This research has been done by the experts of Telekom Innovation Laboratories and
Information Systems Engineering Department. This research has been done mainly to
evaluate various security issues involves in social networking and its solution. The authors
have discussed the security threat and personal privacy threat involved in social networking
site FaceBook. The FaceBook has been taken as a case study and various analyses have been
done to access the amount of personal information being shared in Face-Book and the
consequences of the publicized of personal information in such extents. The authors also
discussed the three protection layer of FaceBook’s security model , its functioning and
effectiveness The security features have been elaborately disused such as authentication
process to ensure the registration of user in FaceBook and other user enabled features to
protect the privacy and personal information .this research also discussed about the Social
Privacy Protector Architecture in FaceBook such as ‘the friends analyzer Facebook
Application’, ‘Social Privacy Protector Firefox Addon’, and HTTP server security (Fire, et,
al, 2012).
Privacy in Social Networks Existing Challenges and proposals for Solution (Prof.
Dr.Gunther Pernul, 2015)
This research has been done to provide the basic information about the security issue in
Social networking. Various images and graphical information has been utilized during the
illustration of the security models and loopholes in social networking. The primary agenda of
the research is to understand the various privacy settings in online social networks. Other
agenda of this research is to acknowledge OSN stakeholders and its implications for Privacy.
Various tools and process to improve privacy on the provider side as well as addressing the
user consciousness has been discussed. This research is not only based on depth analysis of
the networking security issue, but to acknowledge the different models of security in social
media and user-based privacy protection such as ‘Privacy setting on OSNs’ in which different
options are available for the user. The author also discussed the secure procedure of sharing
personal file and information in social media (Gunther ,et,al, 2015).

Security Issues in Social Networking (Damera Vijay Kumar, P S S Varma2, and Shyam
Sunder Pabboju, 2013)
The motive of this research is to analyze the security issue in Social Networking in personal
and organizational level. This research also concerns about extensive uses of the social
networking by individual and organisations .Most of the organisation are using social media
without proper security measures to promote their business which can lead to data theft and
other online security issues. The author investigates the dangerous effects of social media
such as cyber attacks and data theft in a corporate network. The research also emphasis on
various kind of security threat which arises from the comment posted by employees on social
media which may cause serious reputational damage for the organization (Kumar , et ,al,
2013).
Privacy and social networks (Antoine Fressancourt, 2012)
The scope of this research is not limited to security issues, but the author has analyzed the
various problems and issue regarding the data security. In this research, the author has
elaborately discussed the problem related to the individual’s privacy which has been arises
due to extensive use of social networking. This research emphasis on important networking
security issues such as the process to protect the privacy in the social network, the various
regulations that social networking sites required , technological solutions to prevent the
privacy for social networks .In this research, various technical issues have been discussed
along with various mechanism to protect the user’s data (Atos.net, 2018). This research
highlighted the critical role of third party service providers. This research also evaluates the
complexity of privacy protection and process to deal with misuse of private information in
social networking
Security and Privacy Measurements in Social Networks: Experiences and Lessons
Learned (Iasonas Polakis, Federico Maggi, Stefano Zanero, Angelos D. Keromytis,
2014)
The point of view of this research is exploring the practical security and privacy problems
which are major issues in the real world in social networks. The authors have shown their
ethical concern and IRB approval during the practical exploring the security and privacy
problems. The role of SPAM or malware has been analyzed. This research also analyse the

various stages of large-scale experiments in OSNs and their workflow. The authors have
shared their experience and mishaps happened while researching the possible threat while
using various online social networking. The approach for the research has been based on
Ethical aspects; photo-based social authentication, threat model, and findings of the research
(Polakis ,et, al, 2014).
Security and Privacy in Online Social Networks - A Survey(Ed Novak and Qun Li,
2012)
The motive behind this research is to highlight the primary issues related to privacy and
security in online social networks. The objective of this research is to protect user data and
save the user personal and sensitive information from various types of attack which includes
advertisers, third-party application developers an online social network platform provider.
The various aspects of threats such as locating hubs, network inference, and user attributes
have been studied. To understand the security threat the client-server architectures and
distributed social networks also analyzed. This research also discussed about the software and
hardware systems based on online social network with different models to find out the
possible threat and networking failure (Novak and Li, 2012).
Security and Privacy in Social Networks (Gail-Joon Ahn, Mohamed Shehab and Anna
Squicciarini, 2011)
The research discussed the contribution of online social networking sites and their popularity.
Authors concerns about the current trends in social networks which require users to become
part of the system and policy administrators to protect their online data and information. The
unprotected security system of online social network has creates the major security concerns
regarding the privacy and data security. This research also discussed the recent emergence of
security threat which creates a huge challenge for the researcher and established them in a
highly complicated networking arena. This research also investigates the various social
network sites and their mode of online communications. This research shows that the various
types of online networking sites, their mode of communication and their networking
structure. Each social networking site have their own networking system, hence the security
threat occurs in different online networking sites are different. The authors also discussed
about the Protecting personal informations which are generally linked to various other

information, therefore, ensuring the protection of individual’s personal information is quite
challenging (Ahn ,et ,al, 2011).
Analysis of Privacy in Online Social Networks from the Graph Theory Perspective
(Leucio Antonio Cutillo, Refik Molva and Melek Onen, 2011)
The aim of this research is to analyse the various security issues arises due to extensive uses
of online social networks (OSNs). To analyze the security issues authors have discussed the
centralized or de-centralized character of the OSN. Author viewed that the privacy and
security mainly depend on the graph- theoretical properties of the social media platforms and
the methodology and patterns of friendly relations between the users. In this research three
metrics are discussed (Cutillo, et, al, 2011). The three metrics are degree distribution,
clustering coefficient and mixing time. This research also investigates the relationship
between the topological architectures based on social network graph and interaction between
the users and service providers. The analysis of social networking has been done on the real
threat on the real social network platform.
Privacy in Online Social Networks (Elie Raad and Richard Chbeir , 2014)
The main objective of this research is to assess the influence of social media in our daily life
and its effects. This research also highlights the networks utilize in online social networking.
In this research, the data flow diagram, data sharing, and inter-user communication are
discussed with their possible privacy-related issues. The major issues about preventing
privacy and a various potential threat of invasion available during personal information
exchange have been discussed. The analysis has been done on resorting to social network and
link mining technique and other privacy issues. In this research, some major challenges are
discussed on future privacy related model and data security (Raad and Chbeir, 2014).
Role of Security in Social Networking (David Hiatt and Young B. Choi, 2016)
The objective of this research is to analyze the various security tools and prevention methods
to secure the individual’s private information. In this research, various types of security risks
associated with social media have been discussed. This research has been completed to help
the reader to understand the security and privacy issues. This research also discussed the

various steps and process by which a user can protect the personal information and various
security tools have been discussed with their ability and limitation which can be utilized by
the social network organizations to enhance the security (Hiatt and Choi, 2016).
Network Security Threats and Protection Models (Amit Kumar and Santosh Malhotra,
2015)
The research describes various network security threat models. In this research, some
widespread threat has been discussed such as Trojan horses and spyware, Denial of service
attacks (DOS), Data interception and theft. This research also discussed the design of the
potential network architecture which provides security from any kind of data threat and other
online mischievous activities. The research is based on server security holes which are the
major causes of any security threat and theft of data and information. In this research, the
authors have discussed protection models based on networking securities. In order to analyze
the data and network security, various networking model and firewall has been discussed.
Some security breaches techniques such as flooding, keyloggers, Trojan, Phishing, Radio
Jamming and other security problems has been elaborately discussed(Kumar and Malhotra,
2015).
This research also discussed different layers of protection models in online social network to
prevent the cyber attack and data threat. The advanced firewall architecture and improvement
of access control procedure has been analyzed. The authors also analyze the consistency
problem in firewall rules. The author proposes the highly efficient real-time approach to
identify inconsistencies in the firewall. Author emphasis on Firewall Anomaly Management
Environment (FAME) and research have been done in order to design and built a powerful
firewall architecture which allows the administrator to trace the security threat.
Conclusion:
From exploring 12 articles above that are mostly related to security thereat and privacy issues
arises in social network , it can be conclude that there are various security issues in social
networking ,therefore the preventing measures and proper networking security is very
essential.

References:
Gao, H., Hu, J., Huang, T., Wang, J., and Chen, Y. (2011). Security issues in online social
networks. IEEE Internet Computing, 15(4), 56-63.
Fire, M., Kagan, D., Elishar, A., and Elovici, Y. (2012, October). Social privacy protector-
protecting users’ privacy in social networks. In InProc. of the Second International
Conference on Social Eco-Informatics (SOTICS), Venice, Italy.
Netter, M., Pernul, G., Richthammer, C., and Riesner, M. (2015, February). Privacy in Social
Networks: Existing Challenges and Proposals for Solutions. In International Conference on
Information Systems Security and Privacy (pp. 16-27). Springer, Cham.
Kumar, D. V., Varma, P. S. S., & Pabboju, S. S. (2013). Security issues in social
networking. International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security
(IJCSNS), 13(6), 120.
Atos.net. (2018). [online] Available at: https://atos.net/content/dam/global/ascent-
whitepapers/ascent-whitepaper-privacy-and-social-networks.pdf [Accessed 18 Apr. 2018].
Polakis, I., Maggi, F., Zanero, S., and Keromytis, A. D. (2014, September). Security and
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Novak, E., and Li, Q. (2012). A survey of security and privacy in online social networks.
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Ahn, G. J., Shehab, M., and Squicciarini, A. (2011). Security and privacy in social networks.
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Cutillo, L. A., Molva, R., and Onen, M. (2011, December). Analysis of privacy in online
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Raad, E., and Chbeir, R. (2014). Socio-graph representations, concepts, data, and analysis. In
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Hiatt, D., and Choi, Y. B. (2016). Role of Security in Social Networking.
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Kumar, A., and Malhotra, S. (2015). Network Security Threats and Protection Models. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1511.00568.