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Interesting. I can guess with high accuracy who wrote the code at work, sometimes by which PEP8 recommendation they've broken; sometimes seeing an object mutat

Interesting. I can guess with high accuracy who wrote the code at work, sometimes by which PEP8 recommendation they've broken; sometimes seeing an object mutated in two consecutive lines, leaving a white trailing space on a line, or a ^M character, etc. But: > We have a follow-up to this paper showing that surprisingly, coding style survives in compiled binaries Now that is interesting.. Have you noticed similarities in coding styles for different demographics? Is there a Russian style, a Californian style? Or does it lend itself better to a "cohort analysis"? Surely this is one of the first applications that popped into your mind.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
The Californian style goes to great lengths to be inclusive and excludes a lot of people in the process. The Russian style smells like vodka and owns a dash-cam.
pmoriarty 9y ago
I wonder if compiled binary fingerprints could be used to narrow down malware authorship.
- Jugurtha 9y ago
  My "Surely this is one of the first applications that popped into your mind." and mentioning "demographics" was a priming attempt partly prompted by the authors' affiliations. Another question is: how pertinent could this be and could it serve as evidence. Is it as "receivable in court" as fingerprints? If it can be "evidence", how to deal with tampering and entities trying to frame each other by mimicking each other's fingerprint to 'cover their tracks'? Could there be a "market" for fingerprints where you just download a set of fingerprints, write [and compile] your code, and then "apply" the prints to the code? Would there be tools to detect genuine, organic, fingerprints from synthetic or after the fact prints? Can you detect how "fresh" these prints are? Can there be a "glove" equivalent so your fingerprints don't show? Can there be a tool to remove your fingerprints after the fact? Can you apply multiple prints successively? This is indeed fascinating.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

The Californian style goes to great lengths to be inclusive and excludes a lot of people in the process. The Russian style smells like vodka and owns a dash-cam.

pmoriarty 9y ago

I wonder if compiled binary fingerprints could be used to narrow down malware authorship.

Jugurtha 9y ago
My "Surely this is one of the first applications that popped into your mind." and mentioning "demographics" was a priming attempt partly prompted by the authors' affiliations. Another question is: how pertinent could this be and could it serve as evidence. Is it as "receivable in court" as fingerprints? If it can be "evidence", how to deal with tampering and entities trying to frame each other by mimicking each other's fingerprint to 'cover their tracks'? Could there be a "market" for fingerprints where you just download a set of fingerprints, write [and compile] your code, and then "apply" the prints to the code? Would there be tools to detect genuine, organic, fingerprints from synthetic or after the fact prints? Can you detect how "fresh" these prints are? Can there be a "glove" equivalent so your fingerprints don't show? Can there be a tool to remove your fingerprints after the fact? Can you apply multiple prints successively? This is indeed fascinating.