Unmasking Anonymous Email Senders 204
alphadogg writes "Just because you send an email anonymously doesn't mean people can't figure out who you are anymore. A new technique developed by researchers at Concordia University in Quebec could be used to unmask would-be anonymous emailers by sniffing out patterns in their writing style from use of all lowercase letters to common typos. Their research, published in the journal Digital Investigation, describes techniques that could be used to serve up evidence in court, giving law enforcement more detailed information than a simple IP address can produce."
Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Use Google translate. Translate it into Spanish, then into German, then back into English, then into LEET.
It should be simple to obscure the style and weaknesses of the author with this method.
The actual research paper (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dfrws.org/2008/proceedings/p42-iqbal.pdf [dfrws.org]
Note that it was published in 2008. So Slashdot is reporting relatively quickly here.
Re:Pretty print it first (Score:4, Informative)
They seriously think an 80% success rate is good enough to be used in court?
Why not? 19 states and many countries still admit polygraph tests into court, despite the fact that they are wildly inaccurate, and people can be specifically taught to deceive them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity [wikipedia.org]
Re:Pretty print it first (Score:5, Informative)
run it thru pretty print or some other formatter before sending it.
Nah .. run it twice though Google translate
Nah .. ejecutarlo dos veces a través de Google Translate
Nah .. twice run through Google Translate
Re:I recall - he is correct, mod up, not down... (Score:3, Informative)
Here is an except that proves anonymous post is correct:
But even Unabombers are not infallible. Exulting in his apparent mastery of the FBI, the master criminal made his mistake, in the form of a 35,000- word treatise on the "Future of Industrial Society", which he submitted to the Washington Post and New York Times. If they published the rambling, anti-technology manifesto, the writer said, he would cease his campaign. After much soul-searching, the two papers did so on 20 September 1995, on the advice of the FBI.
Relatives in Chicago were struck by similarities between some of Ted Kaczynski's earlier writings and the rambling musings of the Unabomber's tract, and eventually his brother informed the FBI. And so the trail of 18 years, dotted with 200 detained suspects along the way, led to a hand- built cabin near the Continental divide. But the tale may not yet be over.
Here is the article from the Independent [independent.co.uk].
I recollected that this was how the Unabomber was finally caught, via relatives who read his writings and recognized him... I respect that some mods might not like anonymous cowards, but if they are correct they should not be modded down, at least not to be fair.
Re:The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten! (Score:4, Informative)
For example, I've tried to translate the next Slashdot article's blurb:
"Google Voice users learned late Monday that the service now has a way of making purely Internet-based phone calls. Making a SIP call with a "sip:" prefix, the Google Voice phone number and @sip.voice.google.com skips the conventional phone network entirely, saving users cellphone minutes. Disruptive Telephony tested it and found that a call worked "great.""
"Disruptive" was translated as "explosive" in the sense of "trinitrotoluene", and "great" was translated as "big". Translating it back resulted in:
"Google Voice users learned late Monday that the service is now a way to make a clean Internet phone calls Make a call with SIP. "Sip:" prefix, Google Voice phone transmits the number and@sip.voice.google.com common telephone network fully, saving minutes of mobile phone users. Explosive Telephone tested it and found that the call worked "big""
You can probably still guess the meaning, but it's not exactly easy.