Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Rastaman Vibration on May 20, 2013, 07:54 am
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Here's an interesting article about a U.S. Federal Prosecutor who was caught and identified commenting inappropriately online.
****(CLEARNET)****
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/03/letten_announces.html
A forensic linguist was able to link his online posts to his conversational and writing style. As a result, the prosecutor was unmasked and exposed.
Moral of the story - be careful what you say on here. Be careful HOW you say it too.
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In this case I think the pool of people to be searched was very small, but this is still probably a good argument for not writing on the public web under your real name. Maybe also for using a different name on here for posting than you do vending, if you vend.
However, the fact that Satoshi Nokomoto's redoubt has never been penetrated eases this dubiety, or something.
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+1
Thanks for sharing this!
Moral of the story - don't make 595 posts on a very public news site containing inside information on ongoing trials as well as sitting judges, then immediately admit that you're The Guy as soon as someone accuses you.
I don't doubt that this kind of shit will be much more widely used in the coming years, but it's about as credible as a polygraph test, or the JFK "Magic Bullet Theory". It can never be admitted in court (unless you admit to it) and is otherwise just something that needlessly attracts attention. Then again, I really think that's exactly what this guy wanted.
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Yeah our writing style is unique... so dont type exactly the same as you would.
probably a good way to blend in is to type out words in full, no unusual slang and use a spell checker... I love the built in one I have on Liberte ;)
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Bump, cause they didn't believe me when I said it!
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"Your writing style can give you away and on the internet anonymity is difficult to achieve," say the US researchers who have developed online tools to analyse writing.
The researchers, from Drexel University in Philadelphia, studied the leaked conversations and contributions of hundreds of anonymous users in underground online forums.
They were able to identify 80 per cent of users using stylometric analysis to match writing styles to authors.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/why-hackers-should-be-afraid-of-how-they-write-20130116-2csdo.html#ixzz2Tq7CiTgb
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They're calling it cybermetrics here in the uk.. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/from-grainy-cctv-to-a-positive-id-recognising-the-benefits-of-surveillance-8434644.html
I like the idea of it being used to catch trolls and stalkers but you can guarantee they'll use it to monitor us all now.
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Reminds me of how facebook originally worked as a way to communicate, share photo's, plan events etc (but more like as a way to spy on students and/or citizens, first being trialled through highschools. (trialled, more like viralled))
now it's heavily policed, with various officers, government officials and anyone with a status higher than a school headmaster or health/authority
having their own special spying privileges, with so called "cyber-cadets" - with nothing better to do than read and flag PM's and status updates and such that have been tagged by keyword recognition.
We need to fight back. We need to create a checklist of things to think about when we write our posts.
If we can get enough info on how this system of language identification works, we should be able to find ways of confusing the software, possibly with browser extensions that identify possibly targeted or repeated phrases, common spelling mistakes, or our own toolset for anonymizing posts
Ultimately someone needs to leak this software or set of online tools. probably hosted by google
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check out the video in the link I posted (think the article mentions it too). the people who developed this have also developed software that anonimises your writing.
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Were all a snowflake, get off ur daddys dick
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This thread (and the all the previous ones) are a must-read for any major players on SR and elsewhere. Even outside of the courtroom, people don't understand how easy it is for certain individuals to casually identify different users by their writing style alone. It's a talent that some have, and while it can't always be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, sometimes that's not necessary. LE aren't the only ones interested in linking different user accounts together, so be careful of what you say and how you say it. Changing your "e-fingerprint" is a lot harder than some think.
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+1 Sourman