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Anonymous No More: Your Coding Style Can Give You Away
itwbennett writes Researchers from Drexel University, the University of Maryland, the University of Goettingen, and Princeton have developed a "code stylometry" that uses natural language processing and machine learning to determine the authors of source code based on coding style. To test how well their code stylometry works, the researchers gathered publicly available data from Google's Code Jam, an annual programming competition that attracts a wide range of programmers, from students to professionals to hobbyists. Looking at data from 250 coders over multiple years, averaging 630 lines of code per author their code stylometry achieved 95% accuracy in identifying the author of anonymous code (PDF). Using a dataset with fewer programmers (30) but more lines of code per person (1,900), the identification accuracy rate reached 97%.
Can they do it with corporate code where there are naming and style standards in abundance, and code reviews to ensure those guidelines are followed?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Can we use this to find Satoshi?
This is why people need to follow style guides, so that all source code is styled the same.
There's a damn good chance 95% of coders are not criminals, nor would they care if someone identified their code.
That said, this will become a legal nightmare is when this kind of profiling can be used to frame another coder.
And with the laws wanting to treat any "hacker" as a potential terrorist these days, the consequences of even being accused can be rather severe to deal with.
You want scary? The same can be applied to general text on the Internet, tying posters on different sotes together, including anonymous (not your real name avatar) to a site with your real name.
Which the NSA probably has churning away on its databases. Which probably does little more than add confirmation of said links from watching and recording all traffic to any and all of a billion IP addresses.
And I, for one, welcome our new panopticon overlords who won't abuse it, not one of their thousand agents, because they're supposed to check a got-a-warrant box on a piece of paper before choosing to abuse it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.