March 10, 2015
@ThomsonRisk /Twitter
Cybercriminals could be identified more easily with a new system by Drexel University researchers.
Researchers from Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics have devised a way to identify cybercriminals by breaking down lines of code and capturing distinctive patterns.
“Just like writers and artists, every coder has a unique style all their own,” Aylin Caliskan-Islam, a doctoral student at Drexel who developed the system, said in a news release. “Our process distills the most important characteristics of a programmer’s style —which is the first step toward identifying anonymous authors, tracking cybercriminals and settling intellectual property questions.”
Caliskan-Islam, lead author of a report about the cyber fingerprinting system, wrote a program that looks at the overall layout of the code to pinpoint unique patterns to create digital fingerprints.
The key, according to Caliskan-Islam, is analyzing multiple facets of the code so that the places where these features intersect form a unique pattern that is only found in code written by a particular author.
To put their theory to the test, Caliskan-Islam’s team acquired volumes of code—the collective work of 250 contestants who solved coding challenges as part of “Google Code Jam” competitions from 2008-2014. This sample yielded 20,000 distinct coding features and Caliskan-Islam’s program narrowed that list down to the most relevant 137, which were used as the data points for generating digital fingerprints for the authors.
As the team continues to improve its accuracy, the cyber fingerprinting system could prove to be a valuable tool in protecting electronic data and intellectual property.
Read the full release from Drexel University.
