On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 11:18:54AM -0800, Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah wrote: > Having dealt with linguistic forensics for decades, I can assure you > that it is possible to identify authors and sources despite editors, > publishers, and even mangling from electronic communications systems. > There are a huge number of characteristics that can be used to identify > people: my wife (who used to be a secretary) even found characteristics > "line lengths" in stuff people wrote.
An excellent introduction to this field (which I'm certain Rob doesn't need) is Don Foster's "Author Unknown". However, I find this approach wholly inapplicable to software as one of the first things I would do, were I engaged in the business of hacking for some government or another, would be to steal as much of the work of others as I possibly could. Oh, not just because it would defeat this approach, but because it's far more time- and cost-effective. I can't imagine that I'm the first person to think along these lines. ---Rsk "VAX - when you care enough to steal the very best" _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
