When Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-anonymizing Programmers from Executable Binaries · HackerPapers discussions

When Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-anonymizing Programmers from Executable Binaries — HN submission

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 11:02:10 GMT

De-anonymizing programmers from binaries (2017)

103 points; 27 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

When Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-anonymizing Programmers from Executable Binaries — mentioned by quotemstr

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 00:09:15 GMT

Measures like this make me think that a lot of modern privacy advocacy is misguided. Each of us is unique in a huge variety of ways. We have unique fingerprints, unique iris patterns, unique genomes, unique gaits, unique writing styles, unique speech patterns, unique hair, unique teeth, unique sweat composition, and even unique coding styles that survive compilation and optimization [1]. What are you going to do --- use a combination of social pressure and regulation to prevent people analyzing any of these things? We're moving toward a world in which you can be identified if you go out of…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

When Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-anonymizing Programmers from Executable Binaries — mentioned by n4r9

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 13:37:49 GMT

I think you're too quick to dismiss. All that your examples prove is that your personal preferences are different to business style code. The fact that you prefer snake case, shorter variable names and throwaway code is quite telling; I enjoy programming puzzles like Advent of Code, and I always use long names in camel case and try to never repeat code. I find that it reduces the mental load and allows me to confidently code faster. Also it's not pseudo-science. There are real, live techniques for identifying programmers based on binaries: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.08546.pdf

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

When Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-anonymizing Programmers from Executable Binaries — HN submission

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 12:41:39 GMT

Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-Anonymizing Programmers from Executables

4 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.