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Interview with Bart Wessel: The traffic analysis methods developed in WW2 are still valid today

Von / 30. September 2016 / 1 Kommentar / Seite 2 von 2 / Auf einer Seite lesen
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Question: The current situation of traffic analysis is similar to the one of cryptography in the late 1960’s. Back then, it was known that cryptography existed but not much cryptologic expertise was publicly available. This has changed dramatically. Meanwhile, crypto products can be used by virtually everyone. Cryptography is a very active field of academic research and a huge business. Do you think we will see a similar development in traffic analysis countermeasures?
Wessel: I’m not sure. Traffic analysis countermeasures already is a topic of academic study. If successful countermeasures to hide data would become available for the general public to the extend we now routinely apply cryptography, this would be a major setback for law enforcement but a disaster for the the Googles and the Facebooks of our beloved Internet.

Question: Although IT security is a popular topic in the media, we rarely hear of companies reading each other’s’ mails or to listening to each other’s’ phone calls. What about traffic analysis?
Wessel: As I said, it’s easier than analyzing the content of communication. It is just a matter of getting the (meta)data. Between companies, that is not easy to do legally. For national agencies, industrial espionage is almost certain to include traffic analysis.

Thank you very much to Bart for this interview!

Further reading: A fascinating report of Enigma’s contemporary witness, Max Rüegger

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Kommentare (1)

  1. #1 Piper
    6. Oktober 2016

    Very good interview, but one point is missing:

    Meta data itself is not that evil, it becomes evil if it’s linked with data from other sources.

    As shown in the picture at the beginning of Klaus’ post “Why meta data matters” shows it perfectly.

    Telephone companies must store data about every phone call, phone number, timestamp, duration for a given time (6 months, if i am not mistaken).

    This itself is harmless, but it becomes dangerous, if you link the phone number with the name of the owner of that phone number.

    Meta data becomes even more evil if you mix different data sources, like phone calls, bank transactions, flight bookings, emails sent, and sort them by time stamp.

    So the evil thing at all is not analyzing traffic of ONE MEDIA like phone calls, emails, flight booking, banking stuff, but LINKING it all together.

    If a phone company only stores your phone number and the phone numbers you called, timestamp of that call and duration, that is harmless, but if some evildoers link that data with other data, like the name of the phone number owner, and then with the emails of the owner and then banking transactions and, and and, then it really becomes dangerous.

    So, my very own opinion is, that linking data together is more dangerous than just traffic analysis of a single media, like phone calls or sent emails.