George Mason University

Presentation Abstract

Criminal and malicious internet users employ a broad spectrum of privacy-preserving technologies (PPTs) to anonymize their identities. This talk presents a novel methodology and software toolkit that can be used to de-anonymize the identities of bad actors without needing to break PPT protective mechanisms such as encryption.  Using synthetic data for the purposes of developing and testing the technique, we provide an overview of Internet-based PPT processes and then show how de-anonymization can be achieved by analyzing Internet-based “Pattern-of-Life” behaviors.

Patterns-of-Life are observable out of necessary interactions with portions of the underlying Internet infrastructure. Our methods and toolkit can be used by a wide range of law enforcement and homeland security organizations operating in the cyber realm.