Harmful websites rarely operate as isolated, standalone entities. Instead, they are typically run as interconnected networks, where a single operating organization manages multiple types of harmful sites in parallel. To effectively respond to this evolving threat landscape, our research team is developing the Cyber Crime Tracker (CCT) framework, designed to reflect the structural and operational characteristics of harmful website ecosystems. This blog series introduces the overall CCT research approach, focusing on how relationships between harmful sites and their underlying operating organizations can be identified and analyzed. In Part 1, we first provide a brief overview of the key characteristics of harmful websites. We then discuss the necessity of research aimed at technically detecting these ecosystems and analyzing inter-site relationships to uncover shared operational origins.






