Thaindian News

Washington, Mar 9 (ANI): Concordia University researchers have developed a technique to find out the sender of an anonymous email.

Tests showed their method has a high level of accuracy and it can provide presentable evidence in courts of law.

“In the past few years, we’ve seen an alarming increase in the number of cybercrimes involving anonymous emails,” said Benjamin Fung.

“These emails can transmit threats or child pornography, facilitate communications between criminals or carry viruses.”

The new approach relies on the identification of frequent patterns - unique combinations of features that recur in a suspect’s emails. First the team identify the patterns found in emails written by the subject. Then, they filter out any of these patterns, which are also found in the emails of other suspects.

The remaining frequent patterns are unique to the author of the emails being analyzed.

“Let’s say the anonymous email contains typos or grammatical mistakes, or is written entirely in lowercase letters,” says Fung.

They constitute the suspect’s ‘write-print,’ a distinctive identifier like a fingerprint.

“We use those special characteristics to create a write-print. Using this method, we can even determine with a high degree of accuracy who wrote a given email, and infer the gender, nationality and education level of the author.”

Using this method Fung and his colleagues were able to identify authorship with an accuracy of 80 percent to 90 percent.

“Our technique was designed to provide credible evidence that can be presented in a court of law,” says Fung.

“For evidence to be admissible, investigators need to explain how they have reached their conclusions. Our method allows them to do this.”

The findings published in the journal Digital Investigation. (ANI)