Interesting but if your code is open source a lot of people will be contributing to it bringing in their own style. Depending on how popular the code is your fingerprint could be completely hidden amongst hundreds.
When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#32Isn't 52% close to a random guess? I don't get how this ties in with the rest of the paragraph either.
Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#33Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#34This is an interesting article, but there's one part that I don't really understand: 'After scaling up the approach by increasing the dataset size, we de-anonymize 600 programmers with 52% accuracy.'. Isn't 52% close to a random guess? I don't get how this ties in with the rest of the paragraph either.
Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#35Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#36This is an interesting article, but there's one part that I don't really understand: 'After scaling up the approach by increasing the dataset size, we de-anonymize 600 programmers with 52% accuracy.'. Isn't 52% close to a random guess? I don't get how this ties in with the rest of the paragraph either.
Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#37This is an interesting article, but there's one part that I don't really understand: 'After scaling up the approach by increasing the dataset size, we de-anonymize 600 programmers with 52% accuracy.'. Isn't 52% close to a random guess? I don't get how this ties in with the rest of the paragraph either.
Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#38Maybe we can use this method to find Satoshi, if he uses github.
Their code should be online, but I am not sure what exactly is there though.
Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#39Well, this puts a damper on my plan to create a secret identity on the internet under which I release software the way Banksy releases art. Unless I stop publicly writing software for a few years.
you can use another language
Re: When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a professional, I tend to think a distinct coding style is bad. You should try to write a code that is plain and unsurprising and reproducible. To me, this study gives us another reason that we need a more uniform/standardized methodology and good education for the software industry.
Writing code that is plain, unsurprising, and reproducible not only is, itself, a style but also still leaves a lot of room for creativity/individuality.
> Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.