When Coding Style Survives Compilation: De-anonymizing Programmers from Executable Binaries

Understand

The ability to identify authors of computer programs based on their coding style is a direct threat to the privacy and anonymity of programmers.

• While recent work found that source code can be attributed to authors with high accuracy, attribution of executable binaries appears to be much more difficult.
• Many distinguishing features present in source code, e.g.
• variable names, are removed in the compilation process, and compiler optimization may alter the structure of a program, further obscuring features that are known to be useful in determining authorship.