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Unmasking Anonymous Email Senders
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."
run it thru pretty print or some other formatter before sending it.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Sooo... if I want to write an anonymous letter I just switch from my usual grammar natzi mode to my OMFG i c4/Vz p0ns0r your org MANNNN!
Turns out most spam is written by e e cummings.
Who'd have thought it?
Dagnabbit! That means I have to start saying "I could care less" like all the retards on the Internet who can't fathom how that sentence makes no sense whatsoever in order to avoid being the last one on Earth to use it properly and thus be easily identified by my writing "style"! Aaaargh!
who always types part of the body of his message in the subject line.
Yes but unlike writing this can be easily duplicated. Writing using someone else's style isn't an easy task. Doing it with a keyboard, very easy.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
Pretty sure profiling and behavioral analysis has been around for a long time.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
wherefore did I ever adopt such a distinctive writing style.
This only really applies when you have something to compare it with. Besides, this technique just forensic document examination, which is older than computers are, how is this news?
I'm not saying the research is worthless, but their techniques are easily defeated.
It would be simple to write a program that would iteratively "fuzz" your message with typos, lowercase/uppercase toggling, etc. and check the result against their algorithm until the message could no longer be tied to you.
I'm sure someone could do it in 10 lines of Perl, or less.
If the geiger counter does not click, the coffee, she is not thick.
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Translate your text to some language, then back to English. For added fun, your letters will also be much more confusing.
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.
Although the typical "democratic" legal system is all sorts of fucked, as per the usual political pandering, I would hope that nobody could actually be convicted of a crime on this alone.
This was how they caught the Unabomber. They published his diatribes, and his brother recognized his odd mixed up idioms.
I developed a bad habit in very early days of usenet when there was a weird bug with Pnews where you had to begin a post with a blank line -- so to this day I still start every email (written in Pine) with a blank line first for some reason.
This is why I cut & paste each word of anonymous emails from an online dictionary.
Untraceable.
Is something burning?
Oh, it's my karma.
It used to be that people would cut words from magazines and other papers to make ransom notes so no one could recognize their hand writing.
With this concept moving to the computer and internet, it will be trivial to find words, phrases, auto generation scripts and so on to do the digital equivalent. In fact, I think there are several programs out there that will pull random lines of text from several sources on the internet, take a real message and create a image of some sort to lay information over top of it, all just to get around spam filters. (disable the display of image in your email and you will be surprised at what is underneath them sometimes).
But something I can see this really having a problem with is how easy it might make the chance at setting someone else up to take a fall. Suppose you and I have emailed each other for quite some time now. I saved all our correspondence and farmed them to find phrases and word misspellings, cut and pasted them to make statements you never intended to make, then sent them off to threaten the president. Something even more disturbing, suppose we know each other in real life and I have the hots for your wife. I make my way into your house, plant some pipes and fertilizer beside some diesel fuel in one of your closets, get on your computer, sign up for a free email address from it using fake information and start spamming chat rooms and emailing government officials your intent to kill the president.
In any event, the same techniques, available in open literature, can be used to build a
"Free Speech Anonymizer" package which would take and analyze a sample of your
emails and then analyze a new one, looking for the patterns you've used in the past
and suggesting changes to avoid them. Sort of a spell/grammar-check-in-reverse.
Ain't that right, Floyd?
...the King's English shall be for thee to hide thine criminal ways.
Bearded Dragon
Academic papers are worthless until they are peer reviewed and 3rd party tested in an implementation. There are only a few journals that screen submissions well.
The actual research paper is at
http://www.dfrws.org/2008/proceedings/p42-iqbal.pdf
Note that it was published in 2008. So Slashdot is reporting relatively quickly here.
>>> "In the past few years, we've seen an alarming increase in the number of cybercrimes involving anonymous emails," says study co-author Benjamin Fung, a professor of Information Systems Engineering at Concordia University, in a statement. "These emails can transmit threats or child pornography, facilitate communications between criminals or carry viruses."
His e-mail contains all the right key words, why isn't he in jail already?
the best of luck in their attempt.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I long ago gave up any idea that my writing would be very anonymous...
As an American working in software companies in India for ten years, whenever managers sent out surveys they said would be "totally anonymous" I always figured with my American writing style (complete sentences, very few typos, no "spel it like u sa it", active voice, writing out our product and company name in full) everyone would recognize it was my writing anyway... And that was usually the case, as people who weren't supposed to know who wrote what would invariably reply to me, "hey, why did you write that?"
What can be done can be undone. If this gets accepted as evidence in court, why not get a sample of someone's writing and duplicate it in a compromising message?
Just what we need, something iffy given the status of actual evidence. I feel much better now.
I'm writing this statement with the knowledge that it will be tracked.
I think the article has many interesting points. I will think about them.
When you can't be anonymous and you realize that anything and everything you say can be tracked back to you, you will never be genuine. Ever.
Of course, I am joking. I'll be completely genuine for YOU!
Did I mention that even if one posts something genuine, they'll hedge just in case they're tracked down?
Of course, I would never hedge, but others might.
But of course, ALL OF YOU understand this because you're the most intelligent folks on the internet.
Then again, there are others who are most intelligent and insightful - that means YOU - whoever tracks me down and shoves this post in my face. Kudos to you for being soooooo internet saving for finding this post!
Then again, if anyone finds this post offensive, I am completely joking! This is a joke! Really, I always joke!
No, I'm just joking!
Does this really come as a surprise?
So, ThEy're VEry good at Judging OBScure punctuation patterns to determine email authorship?
.hmm, Too hard to finESse that last bit.
Baloney! wILL you Give me A . .
Most of the time I write emails in the style the recipient writes in. Same idea as talking to the level of the listener.
To anonymize your writing all you have to do is translate your original text into a second language and then translate the secondary language back into the original language. Any nuance or personalization would be lost in translation.
According to a friend this works for plagiarizing papers.
Yopu for you?
Sincerely
asshole.
Wait wut? Whenever I write an anonymous message or letter, I always change my writing style randomly to something else. It's not just machines which can parse through capitalizations, punctuations and spelling errors in a text, you know?
Cash, Internet cafe, translate, translate back, send.
Research money well spent huh.
Even worse than false negatives would be false positives. Maybe those death threats to your boss sound just like you, use the same words you use, the same grammar, everything. That's because your jealous coworker pirated himself a copy of this program, fed some writing of yours through it, and then kept editing those death threats until the program claimed they sounded just like you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten!
e in the subject line.
I actually write in different styles, and used that for different RPG game systems and stories - now all I have to do is go to a nearby cafe (cant go a block without running into two) and use their free computers using different personas.
In fact, I think I'll start studying the writing styles of Cheney, Rove, and Fnarf and using them as writing templates for my next posts ...
Pretty easy to do.
I think most of my current personae are quite radically different in writing style from my other published pseudonyms.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
To Japanese and back to Engilish: Google Translate. Then translated into Spanish for REITs and German, and English. This author and disadvantages, should be easy to hide the style of using this method.
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
As you run through the translator and back. This will do much to get rid of your telltale habits.
I'm sure I saw this in an episode of Numb3rs once. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Their conclusion is completely off base. Even if their software is 100% accurate, it can only categorize a certain style of writing as having come from a single person (and that's still debatable since it's not too hard to duplicate type-written styles). What if every anonymous writer uses the same script to turn their text into "1337"-speak? The software would not have the ability to match the style to any one person -- it can only conclude that it is very likely that such types of a message was written by the same person/script.
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.
Okay lets try this, setting English to Spanish; than Spanish to German; than German to English...because you don't want to, but you are curious like curious George.
Google Tranlate to Spanish:
Utilizar Google Translate. Traducir al español, luego en alemán, a continuación, de nuevo en Inglés, entonces en LEET.
Debe ser fácil de ocultar el estilo y las debilidades del autor con este método.
Google Translate to German:
Mit Google Translate. Übersetzen ins Spanische, dann Deutsch, dann wieder in Englisch, dann in LEET.
Es sollte einfach den Stil des Autors und Schwächen mit dieser Methode zu verstecken.
Google Tranlate from German to English
With Google Translate. Translate into Spanish, then German, then English, then in LEET.
It should be easy to hide the style of the author and weaknesses with this method
Could not find LEET in Google Translate, it must really be something....
In the UK 80% of the jury is enough to convict you of a crime, so I suspect that over here the courts would probably jump at an 80% success rate.
Personally I don't see how this can be anything other than subjective as there are far too many ways to get round it.
or run on sentences that have absolutely not punctuated and horribel speeling to bot then theyll never no it was u but comprehnsion might go down the toobs
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.
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.
According to a friend this works for plagiarizing papers.
I see. And how often does your friend do this?
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx
It won't ever BE evidence, but it will lead to evidence. I'm sure the NSA uses software like this along with speech recognition software and voiceprint recognition software to create investigative leads for follow-up.
I guess we will have to do like in the "old" days. Clip words and letters from newspapers and magazines, and paste them in the email... Another trick. Send it through a translator to another language, then back to your native tongue. There is always something "missing in translation" and one of them is always the style of the writer...
If the guy used a good grammar and spell checker when sending out the anonymous email, all this analysis would be quite useless. I'm a long time client of CryptoHeaven http://www.cryptoheaven.com/ and I feel very confident that my emails remain fully anonymous... -henry
Sincerely
I got www.infinity.com when I converted....is that what you intended? Here is the first page of that website, sans pagination...not very friendly, lmao.
Note: Do NOT enter "INTERNAL/" as part of your user name. This is a SunGard Application Service Provider environment, which may be accessed and used only for official business by authorized personnel. Unauthorized access or use of this environment is prohibited and may subject violators to administrative, and/or criminal, civil action. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy. All information on this environment may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, read, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed by and to authorized personnel. User Login User ID / Alias Password Remember my User ID Branch:trunk rev:27566 date:Tue, Jun 29 2010 03:55:27, EDT
To get to above, I used the following steps:
This site - www.onlineconversion.com which I found thanks to Google.
Then it was simple as selecting Number conversions, than bits to bytes, total time from start to finish, approx 10 minutes and I do not have any special insight into the subject, topic, though I have worked as an Data Conversion Consultant at one time in my past. Not sure that helped as much as being a programmer and figuring it was in binary....it was a fun excercise...was just wondering if I were right or not?
Im unsuscribing form /. RSS feed, sick and tired of getting useless, speculative, crap fed to me.
Goodbye
1v3 b33n typ1ng l1k3 th15 4 n0 r34s0n??? d4mn1t!! My pl4n5 r f01l3d 4g41n!
Every once in awhile, I get a trollish and insulting comment on my blog. Usually, the commenter leaves the name field anonymous but leaves a valid email address as an invitation for me to take the bait and respond. A quick google search of the email often reveals other trollish comments posted by the same user elsewhere on the internet, and usually they slip up at least once and leave their name. From there, it's pretty easy to find out more personal information.
Google makes money data mining. You shouldn't trust them with nefarious anti-government translations; if they never delete one e-mail, they will definitely never lack the same logging for your translation activities.
I'm also starting to think that trusting my web searches to them all these years may not be such a good idea, even if their dashboard claims they've already deleted it.
That said, duckduckgo isn't as good for searching and lacks mapping and similar all-in-one google conveniences. Their translations are the best; one and a half order of magnitude better than the babelfish I used till last year. Google translate sentences stay on topic more than 90% of the time in long pages, rather than having completely obvious topic changes when a particular noun or verb has multiple pairs to translate to. That said, I would prefer a flaky translation because noise can anonymize you.
It's the first time I'm accepting that not all job board spammers are ESL chinese or russians living outside the USA; it makes sense that more than a handful write badly precisely to obscure the source behind foreign speech and overseas TLDs that globalization allows us to rent without setting a foot in far away lands. Example: "bit .ly"
To Anonymous, the original text after the second languages, to write all of the following must be converted back to the original language. The personalization of the nuances, all is lost in translation. According to the paper plagiarism friends, have a job.
I'd imagine this software would be very easy to fool if you wanted to commit the resources too. Or even just keep tweaking your fake document until you produce the desired result from the software.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
that's funny.
I hire someone from 4chan to ghost write all my correspondence....
... Y00 n00b!
Have gnu, will travel.
Dennis Montgomery and his phony secret terrorist message decoding software comes to mind for some reason...
Bow before me, for I am root.
The simple solution to defeating writing analysis and style matching is wash it though a a couple of different translation engines a couple of times.
English bomb threat letter > Spanish>Russian> English>MS word spellcheck> French>Italian>English> MS word spellcheck
what a load of shit.
You can use Google Translator to tweak the text:
1. Copy your anonymous letter
2. Translate it to Arabic using Google
3. Translate it to Spanish using Google
4. Translate it to German using Google
5. Translate it back to English
6. Fix the typos
7. Send.
Here's an example (I skipped step 6):
1. A copy of your policy
2. Translated into Arabic by Google
3. Spanish translation by Google
4. Google Translated into German
5. English translation on back
6. Fix typo
7. Send.
Well, all I know is, when you find that crazy typewriter you'll have your killer.
Stone me.
I'll be affin' to modify me writing style 'en. Yeah dats de ticket. Dat's wot I'm about now, in' I ?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
That is all. ;)
First I have to comment on the linked article in TFA... The 7 way not to get hacked by Anonymous... They forget the first and most basic: Don't be an moron and piss them off. There was no reason Mastercard should do what they did. Whatever Wikileaks had going (legal or otherwise) did not involve Mastercard, fraud, funding or similar, and therefore they had no right to stop processing their payments. Doing so anyway was stupid beyond words and they deserved what came to them. Actually they deserved much worse but DDoS was a start.
Okay, about anonymity and anonymous emails. Their approach is based on the idea that the structure of writing is unique to the individual writing. That is probably true but it is easy to manipulate. Just use multiple writers (Anonymous does this extensively when they write their announcements) or use Google translate to translate into a language with a different structure and back again, cleaning up the worst mistakes of the mechanical translation. That way different words are used, and the structure is widely different. As you mess with the translation output, the resulting 'identity' is a mixture of the machine and you, and in order not to be profiled on that, switch languages or use two intermediary languages. A third way is the 2011 version of cutting out letters from newspapers/magazines (done to avoid handwriting identification): Use Google and copy-paste sentences from countless sources into your message. That will completely mess up their profiling as well.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It'll never work.
As I've said MANY TIMES before - a simple 300MB hosts file will fix all problems.
See my post here, here, and here
---
APK
"Just cuz youze senen uh email anonyfuckingmously don' mean niggas can't figure out who you be anymo'. uh new technique developed of du researchers at Concordia University in Quebec could be used ta unmask would-be anonymous emailers by sniffing out patterns in they writing style from use o' all lowercase letters ta common typos all ye damn hood ratz" link
I was sure I've heard them being able to analyse the use of words and grammar to identify the writer of a particular piece of writing.
Seems like all these researchers have done is came up with the 'genius' idea of applying it to email!
Paul F Tompkins did this on his first or second podcast: tearfully hilarious.
The guys who invented this Anonymous mail fingerprinting method recently ran the entire "Shake-speare's Folio" through their computer farm and the software determined it was actually authored by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Turth Will Out!
It occurs to me that if they have a normalized data set to analyze, their job becomes MUCH easier in some ways.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I think this is how they caught Theodore Kaczynski, who apparently was posting anonymous comments on my blog. But the one-armed-man writing LOL has proved a clever adversary.
Gently reply