Stack Exchange — security.stackexchange.com

The content of security.stackexchange.com (https://security.stackexchange.com/), a Stack Exchange question-and-answer site, as published in the Stack Exchange Data Dump of April 2024 on the Internet Archive. The posts table holds 543,402 rows: 189,114 posts (68,722 questions, 118,361 answers, 999 tag wiki excerpts, 999 tag wikis, 29 posts of type 6 and 4 posts of type 7) and 354,288 comments, written between 12 May 2010 and 31 March 2024. Beside it are 253,806 user accounts, 1,266,882 votes, 405,699 badges awarded, 1,263 tags, 576,030 post revisions and 25,060 links between posts. Every answer keeps the question it answers and every comment the post it was written on, so the threads can be rebuilt. The Internet Archive item describes the dump as anonymised; the votes table names the voter in only 989 rows.

#Cybersecurity#Information security#Reputation#Stack exchange data dump

Download data package README Original files as received BibTeX JSONSimilar datasets

Analytics

The interactive network needs JavaScript.

· graph.json

The full graph has 46,578 nodes; this view shows the 1,000-node sample the pipeline drew for display. Node size is centrality, colour is community.

46.6K
Nodes
104.3K
Edges
4.81e-05
Density
679
Components
-0.06497
Assortativity
0.4%
Reciprocity
23.6K
Bridges
Most central nodes
3960.01131
107140.00633
313560.00393
9710.00384
720310.00309
9530.00258
54000.00251
22120.00249
1086490.00232
23740.00225
Content metrics

543,402 records scored · min–maxmean ± 0.675 σ (the interquartile range if the values are roughly normal)mean

x scoreμ 2.554 ± 11.952
min -39max 1.8K
x view countμ 4K ± 16K
min 4max 1.2M
x answer countμ 1.722 ± 1.582
min 0max 38
x comment countμ 1.874 ± 2.757
min 0max 48
x favorite countμ 0.005 ± 0.081
min 0max 2
9.3
Flesch–Kincaid grade
US school grade level
10.1
Automated readability index
Frequent terms
usekeypasswordserversecurityuserdatalikeaccessdonneedwayquestionknowclientfilesystemcertificatetimecodewantsecureattackernetworkinformationanswerpossibleexampleattackencryptioncasethinkpublicpasswordshashusersgooddifferentwebsiteapplicationaddressworkdoesnableencryptedbrowserprivatenewemail
Topic clusters

Topic 0

answer
question
thank
comment
ask
think
edit
post

Topic 1

network
router
port
packet
address
firewall
traffic
mac

Topic 2

password
email
character
user
account
word
mail
use

Topic 3

drive
file
disk
gdb
usb
system
buffer
boot

Topic 4

token
xss
request
cookie
csrf
user
session
cooky

Topic 5

security
risk
threat
information
company
people
good
question

Topic 6

hash
salt
password
function
random
bit
collision
bcrypt

Topic 7

file
malware
virus
vulnerability
code
php
exploit
upload

Topic 8

certificate
cert
sign
trust
client
root
server
key

Topic 9

key
public
private
message
encryption
rsa
algorithm
encrypt

Topic 10

vpn
tor
traffic
node
proxy
exit
use
connect

Topic 11

card
bank
pci
credit
transaction
dss
payment
pin
Top hashtags
#11.8K
#21.2K
#include1K
#3570
#section424
#7396
#11291
#4281
#12273
#5246
#8219
#define201
#cve185
#0175
#i104
#1075
#3975
#673
#page72
#93666

Computed over the full corpus.

Record

Catalog key
stackexchange-security-stackexchange-com
Authors
Stack Exchange, Inc.
Year
2024
Source paper
Stack Exchange Data Dump
License
CC BY-SA 2.5 / 3.0 / 4.0 (by contribution date) (CC-BY-SA-2.5 AND CC-BY-SA-3.0 AND CC-BY-SA-4.0)
Records
612,803
Nodes
46,578
Edges
104,311 (directed)
Nodes are
user (Stack Exchange account)
Edges are
answer collaboration (A answered B's question)
Attributes
nodes have attributes; edges have attributes
Text corpus
question titles, post bodies, comment text, tag names
Languages
en
Collected
2010/2024 (2010s, 2020s)
Tasks
From the graph: link prediction, community detection
Region
Global (inferred: the platform is used worldwide)

Provenance

Originally published at
https://archive.org/details/stackexchange link checked
Original files as received
The source files, unconverted, kept for reference: mirrored on echo.directory on 2026-10-09, 248.0 MB across 1 files. Checksums in MANIFEST.json. For use, start with the data package below.
Data package
Version 1.0.0 of this dataset as an ECHO Data Package: posts (543,402 rows), users (253,806 rows), x_votes (1,266,882 rows), x_badges (405,699 rows), x_tags (1,263 rows), x_post_history (576,030 rows), x_post_links (25,060 rows).
Structure
Temporal (timestamped), Node attributes, Text, Threaded conversations

How to cite

BibTeX

@misc{echo2026,
  title  = {ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online},
  author = {Switzer, Braden and Zafarani, Reza},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://echo.directory},
  note   = {Syracuse University}
}

@misc{stackexchange_2024,
  title     = {Stack Exchange Data Dump},
  author    = {{Stack Exchange, Inc.}},
  year      = {2024},
  month     = {apr},
  publisher = {Internet Archive},
  url       = {https://archive.org/details/stackexchange}
}

APA

Switzer, B., & Zafarani, R. (2026). ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online [Data repository]. Syracuse University. https://echo.directory

Stack Exchange, Inc. (2024). Stack Exchange — security.stackexchange.com [Data set]. https://stackexchange-security.echo.directory/

MLA

Switzer, Braden, and Reza Zafarani. ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online. Syracuse University, 2026, echo.directory.

Stack Exchange, Inc. Stack Exchange — security.stackexchange.com. 2024, stackexchange-security.echo.directory/.

BibTeX · RIS · CSL-JSON

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