[OT] mitigating or defeating syntax analysis

scar scar at drigon.com
Thu Apr 17 19:04:05 UTC 2008


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not exactly sure how to articulate this, but i'll do my best.

assume there is a global adversary trying to track down an anonymous
Tor-user by using syntax analysis.  that is to say, gathering sets of
sentences or paragraphs from e-mails or forums, etc. and then
recognizing similarities in the syntax (that is, the way the sentence or
paragraph is written) in order group anonymous text with non-anonymous
text and ultimately reveal the identity of an anonymous user, based on
the way they write, basically.  the field of psycholinguistics would
probably be a good resource for this type of analysis.

i hope that's clear enough.  so, Tor can help defeat network traffic
analysis.  now, how can the anonymous user (or, more accurately,
talker/writer/blogger) mitigate or defeat this syntax analysis?  are
there any scholarly papers or websites with this information, or at
least talking more about syntax analysis (perhaps there is a more proper
technical term)?  for example, i think one rule would be to always use
proper capitalization and punctuation, something i never do in my
non-anonymous writing. ;)

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