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Tracking a Specific Machine Anywhere On The Net
An anonymous reader writes "An article on ZDNet Australia tells of a new technique developed at CAIDA that involves using the individual machine's clock skew to fingerprint it anywhere on the net." Possible uses of the technique include "tracking, with some probability, a physical device as it connects to the Internet from different access points, counting the number of devices behind a NAT even when the devices use constant or random IP identifications, remotely probing a block of addresses to determine if the addresses correspond to virtual hosts (for example, as part of a virtual honeynet), and unanonymising anonymised network traces."
Exactly! After the technique to use timestamps to count hosts behind nat OpenBSD added tcp options to the scrub directive. For all my isp knows I have a single box since I have the firewall generating strong ISN's as well as scrubbing timestamps.
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..slight variations in the timing of the clock at various points throughout the CPU..
You are fucking kidding, right? He's referring to the real-time clock in your computer, not the delays inside the CPU.