DUST Search - Counterintelligence 101: Tracking Alts or Stylometry for Dummies.

Coleman Gray wrote:

Ric Barlom wrote:

Well here's the thing when it comes to spies, guys, and let me give you a little insight on being a great spy catcher. Needless to say I've got some experience in catching a few rotten tomatoes every now and then as a side gig. So here's the pro tip: Spies want to get caught! Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It's absolutely true nevertheless and let me repeat: Spies want to get caught, and you as a spy catcher just need to pay attention to them like you'd be paying attention to your new lover and they're gonna give away all their secrets on a silver platter, no questions asked. This just goes to show that dealing with spies, just like any other thing, is all about the people skills and those of us, like me, who are blessed with these skills usually reap the rewards. Peace out!

Sooo true, people wanna be known as "that guy who kitten'd a corp up with espionage" or someone who became close, but for people to get that reputation they have to be first caught lol.

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Mithridates VI IMPSwarm Negative-Feedback 1141	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:03:00 - [1] - Quote Counterintelligence 101: Employment History Without EVE Account. Counterintelligence 101: Your Enjin is not secure. Everyone has a unique writing style. The larger the text sample available, the greater the accuracy with which you can lock down each individual author to a signature made up of a unique combination of habits, made up of such things as frequency of letters, punctuation count, syntax, paragraph count, misspellings, words per sentence, average word length, frequency of function words. We're not going to get too technical here, because this is a 101 and I'm unwilling to post source code for my personal stylometric engine. Identify the player you are suspicious of. PROTIP: This should be all of them. If not, you're doing it wrong. Trawl through their posting history looking for irregularities and quirks. Check 'em out elsewhere on the internet if you have access to that as well. As I say, the larger the text sample, the greater your chance of success. Find a misused turn of phrase or a funky spelling you're confident is unique to this poster. Search it on the forums. Often, you're best to use Google to search the forums by using the search terms "site:forums.dust514.com" or "site:dustsearch.com" if you want pre-edit posts. (That's another thing which is of use, by the way. Chribba doesn't update posts after they are edited, so often you'll find the originals on his site long after the poster hoped it was gone). Use this method to narrow down the list of potential alternate accounts. This is usually more efficient than cross-referencing every post on the forum, which requires something like Scrapy or a similar method of turning the entire forum into a useful database, you'll also need to look into how to create a corpus in Signature in the next step to combine the posts of each user into a meaningful collection. Depending on the uniqueness of the quirk you've found, you may not require further evidence. If you do, save a large sample of the player's posting history into a text file and download Signature which is a free stylometric analysis program. Now, save a similar sample of the posting history of the alt you have discovered. The larger these samples are, the more accurate the test will be. In addition to these, save samples from 5 randomly selected players. Make a txt file out of each of these and feed them into Signature. For 101 purposes, the closer the lines are to each other in the graph and the closer the numbers are, the more similar the signatures of the authors of the posts. Better instructions are available on the website. The next step is to take these probabilistic results and use them to inform your security decisions or future interactions with your members. Better safe than sorry.
steadyhand amarr Ametat Security Amarr Empire 438	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:21:00 - [2] - Quote Tbh a good spy would invent q whole new persona includeing how they write so this method will only catch the rookies still good thing to have :-)
skinn trayde On The Brink CRONOS. 109	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:23:00 - [3] - Quote the whole writing style analysis goes out the window if those alts are never used to post on forums...
Mithridates VI IMPSwarm Negative-Feedback 1144	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:24:00 - [4] - Quote steadyhand amarr wrote: Tbh a good spy would invent q whole new persona includeing how they write so this method will only catch the rookies still good thing to have :-) Many try and then fail when the factors which are more subconsciously influenced are considered in isolation from the others. E z enuf to tipe lyk an idiot but den ur sytax and stuff r stil teh same.
Mithridates VI IMPSwarm Negative-Feedback 1144	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:26:00 - [5] - Quote skinn trayde wrote: the whole writing style analysis goes out the window if those alts are never used to post on forums... Clearly alts who you don't have text samples from are considerably less vulnerable to text analysis, yes... I was going to just let that be an unspoken, universally understood truth but you're welcome to spell it out like that.
skinn trayde On The Brink CRONOS. 110	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:39:00 - [6] - Quote Mithridates VI wrote: skinn trayde wrote: the whole writing style analysis goes out the window if those alts are never used to post on forums... Clearly alts who you don't have text samples from are considerably less vulnerable to text analysis, yes... I was going to just let that be an unspoken, universally understood truth but you're welcome to spell it out like that. never let it be said that I fail to state the obvious :-)
Mithridates VI IMPSwarm Negative-Feedback 1145	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:40:00 - [7] - Quote skinn trayde wrote: Mithridates VI wrote: skinn trayde wrote: the whole writing style analysis goes out the window if those alts are never used to post on forums... Clearly alts who you don't have text samples from are considerably less vulnerable to text analysis, yes... I was going to just let that be an unspoken, universally understood truth but you're welcome to spell it out like that. never let it be said that I fail to state the obvious :-) Breaking: Bulletproof vests ineffective against chemical warfare.
Takahiro Kashuken Red Star. EoN. 365	Posted - 2013.05.02 10:42:00 - [8] - Quote Breaking news - dont let just anyone be a director
Ric Barlom On The Brink CRONOS. 31	Posted - 2013.05.02 11:01:00 - [9] - Quote Well here's the thing when it comes to spies, guys, and let me give you a little insight on being a great spy catcher. Needless to say I've got some experience in catching a few rotten tomatoes every now and then as a side gig. So here's the pro tip: Spies want to get caught! Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It's absolutely true nevertheless and let me repeat: Spies want to get caught, and you as a spy catcher just need to pay attention to them like you'd be paying attention to your new lover and they're gonna give away all their secrets on a silver platter, no questions asked. This just goes to show that dealing with spies, just like any other thing, is all about the people skills and those of us, like me, who are blessed with these skills usually reap the rewards. Peace out!
Vyzion Eyri The Southern Legion RISE of LEGION 570	Posted - 2013.05.02 11:20:00 - [10] - Quote I just talk to people over voice chat and if voices match, bingo. :D

Ric Barlom On The Brink CRONOS. 32	Posted - 2013.05.02 11:32:00 - [11] - Quote Vyzion Eyri wrote: I just talk to people over voice chat and if voices match, bingo. :D A sound plan.
Daalzebul Del'Armgo D3LTA FORC3 Orion Empire 52	Posted - 2013.05.02 11:42:00 - [12] - Quote Vyzion Eyri wrote: I just talk to people over voice chat and if voices match, bingo. :D http://www.screamingbee.com/ sure it matches and yes if yea know how you can use a pc to route it to your ps3 you can make yourself sound like batman! =p
J lav hvy Paladin Survey Force Amarr Empire 0	Posted - 2013.05.02 12:21:00 - [13] - Quote You'll never guess who I really am ><
J Lav Opus Arcana Orion Empire 56	Posted - 2013.05.02 12:22:00 - [14] - Quote Don't listen to J lav hvy , I'm pretty sure someone made him up to troll me. I didn't know I was so notorious!
princess shinntak On The Brink CRONOS. 1	Posted - 2013.05.02 12:28:00 - [15] - Quote Ric Barlom wrote: Vyzion Eyri wrote: I just talk to people over voice chat and if voices match, bingo. :D A sound plan. 10 points for Ric...
Vaerana Myshtana Bojo's School of the Trades 800	Posted - 2013.05.02 12:32:00 - [16] - Quote Mithridates VI wrote: skinn trayde wrote: the whole writing style analysis goes out the window if those alts are never used to post on forums... Clearly alts who you don't have text samples from are considerably less vulnerable to text analysis, yes... I was going to just let that be an unspoken, universally understood truth but you're welcome to spell it out like that. That's why you conduct detailed discussions offline or in some other medium where you can snap a log. In EVE, for instance, you can pull the chat log and post it to your corp forums' Human Resources section. Every potential recruit and member should have their own thread. This gives you a baseline for reference, not just for stylometry, but also for other managers to look for warning signs. Then, as other managers have interactions with members that are of interest, they can post those to the member's thread for future reference. All Glory to the Eethrak!
Vaerana Myshtana Bojo's School of the Trades 800	Posted - 2013.05.02 12:34:00 - [17] - Quote Vyzion Eyri wrote: I just talk to people over voice chat and if voices match, bingo. :D Unfortunately, that's pretty hard to be sure of. Sure, most people aren't good at changing their voices, but there are plenty of tools available that don't sound like total crap. Even assuming that people are not changing their voices, it's hard to compare them over time unless you are making recordings and doing voice analysis.
Illuminaughty-696 Omega Risk Control Services 257	Posted - 2013.05.02 13:48:00 - [18] - Quote I stick to the I know all my directors in real life, where they live and could always drive out and punch them in the throat approach. Of course we're a small corp so it makes that easier. Good advice, though, with obvious limitations, but a lot of DUSTers have no idea the world of alt espionage they are stepping into with the EVE crowd (and plenty of DUSTers, too).
Coleman Gray GunFall Mobilization Covert Intervention 210	Posted - 2013.05.02 13:48:00 - [19] - Quote Ric Barlom wrote: Well here's the thing when it comes to spies, guys, and let me give you a little insight on being a great spy catcher. Needless to say I've got some experience in catching a few rotten tomatoes every now and then as a side gig. So here's the pro tip: Spies want to get caught! Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It's absolutely true nevertheless and let me repeat: Spies want to get caught, and you as a spy catcher just need to pay attention to them like you'd be paying attention to your new lover and they're gonna give away all their secrets on a silver platter, no questions asked. This just goes to show that dealing with spies, just like any other thing, is all about the people skills and those of us, like me, who are blessed with these skills usually reap the rewards. Peace out! Sooo true, people wanna be known as "that guy who kitten'd a corp up with espionage" or someone who became close, but for people to get that reputation they have to be first caught lol.
Ric Barlom On The Brink CRONOS. 33	Posted - 2013.05.02 14:25:00 - [20] - Quote Coleman Gray wrote: Ric Barlom wrote: Well here's the thing when it comes to spies, guys, and let me give you a little insight on being a great spy catcher. Needless to say I've got some experience in catching a few rotten tomatoes every now and then as a side gig. So here's the pro tip: Spies want to get caught! Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It's absolutely true nevertheless and let me repeat: Spies want to get caught, and you as a spy catcher just need to pay attention to them like you'd be paying attention to your new lover and they're gonna give away all their secrets on a silver platter, no questions asked. This just goes to show that dealing with spies, just like any other thing, is all about the people skills and those of us, like me, who are blessed with these skills usually reap the rewards. Peace out! Sooo true, people wanna be known as "that guy who kitten'd a corp up with espionage" or someone who became close, but for people to get that reputation they have to be first caught lol. That's exactly right, man! And the thing is that there's so much we can learn about stuff in general just by really paying attention to others. I mean number crunching and statistics are all well and good but at the end of the day a big part of everything is knowing human behaviour.

BRAIN-MATTER-SPLATTERER NEURALGIA D3LTA FORC3 Orion Empire 1	Posted - 2013.05.15 09:30:00 - [21] - Quote Y'all are very funny, now please tell me exactly how you plan to catch a spy & then deliver the hard evidence in time before that member has no clue what your even going on about & figures you don't like them & backs out of your corp, figuring you already planned on doing just that because you probably had some idle wild hate for them somewhere within yourself.
Mithridates VI IMPSwarm Negative-Feedback 1438	Posted - 2013.05.15 10:57:00 - [22] - Quote BRAIN-MATTER-SPLATTERER NEURALGIA wrote: Y'all are very funny, now please tell me exactly how you plan to catch a spy & then deliver the hard evidence in time before that member has no clue what your even going on about & figures you don't like them & backs out of your corp, figuring you already planned on doing just that because you probably had some idle wild hate for them somewhere within yourself. What are you rambling about? Why on earth would you involve a suspected spy in your background check by being suspiciously silent or by talking to them about it?
Tamora Jean Calhoun One-Armed Bandits Heretic Initiative 0	Posted - 2013.05.15 11:04:00 - [23] - Quote I wont be a good spy... Llan Heindell.
Llan Heindell One-Armed Bandits Heretic Initiative 114	Posted - 2013.05.15 11:04:00 - [24] - Quote Terrible Llan. @topic Very good advise. Llan Heindell.
boba's fetta Thukker Tribe Holdings Inc. Gathering Of Nomadic Explorers 67	Posted - 2013.05.15 11:16:00 - [25] - Quote Mithridates VI wrote: skinn trayde wrote: Mithridates VI wrote: skinn trayde wrote: the whole writing style analysis goes out the window if those alts are never used to post on forums... Clearly alts who you don't have text samples from are considerably less vulnerable to text analysis, yes... I was going to just let that be an unspoken, universally understood truth but you're welcome to spell it out like that. never let it be said that I fail to state the obvious :-) Breaking: Bulletproof vests ineffective against chemical warfare. breaking: bulletproof vest not actully bulletproof just bullet resistant.


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