Recently I read an article about NSA’s efforts in identifying Satoshi Nakamoto, who created bitcoin and remained elusive. NSA had spent a lot of resources at its disposal to create a writeprint to for billions of texts around the world and zero in on Satoshi.

Fingerprint plays a huge role in investigations as they provide a reliable identity which is difficult to change, before that identity was based on photographs, height, mole marks etc. So the quest for fingerprinting grew and now it is possible to get voiceprint, writeprint and can work on anything to create a unique signature about a person.

I read about this first in Simon Singh’s Code book, the book talks a lot about how cryptographers had to constantly be on the run to come up with new techniques just to be broken by cryptanalysts who find chinks in the armour, it is a never ending game. One of the interesting reads was about a fingerprinting technique called fist, which is a style arising due to the telegraph operator’s way using the telegraph key. While the messages were encrypted, the operator’s fist gave away the identity of the german troops and by radio frequency analysis the location was also identified. The messages which were encrypted was of no use to the British, but the location and identity proved to be vital  which was invaluable when there were no satellites.

I never took privacy and security seriously, but the more I read about and hear from friends the more insecure I feel. If someone is determined enough and have resources at hand, it is going to be an easy task to violate someone else’s security and privacy. More and more tools to break will be freely available and new technology is going to make current military grade encryptions cakewalk to break. If we need privacy we need to keep running, there is no place to hide.

p.s. Also read about ‘Dolphin attack‘ which takes vulnerabilities to new levels.