Forget anonymity, we can remember you wholesale with machine intel, hackers warned

32c3 Anonymous programmers, from malware writers to copyright infringers and those baiting governments with censorship-foiling software, may all be unveiled using stylistic programming traits which survive into the compiled binaries – regardless of common obfuscation methods.

It was accompanied by the publication of an arxiv [PDF] titled When Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-anonymizing Programmers from Executable Binaries, written by researchers based at Princeton University in the US, one of whom is notably part of the Army Research Laboratory.

The researchers began trying to identifying malicious programmers, noting that there is “no technical difference” between security-enhancing use-cases for mapping the style of posts, and privacy-infringing use cases. In other words, writing style betrays the writer.

Many of the distinguishing features (such as variable names) in the C/C++ source code compiled and analysed by the researchers are removed when that code is compiled, and compiler optimisation procedures may further alter the structural qualities of programs, obfuscating authorship even further For the full article click here 

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