Playing with traffic

Traffic analysis can help warn of terrorist attacks, but it can also be used to crack encryption, so we need to act now.

Mention traffic analysis and most people will probably think of those poor souls sat on the side of the road with clipboards and dayglow jackets, but in the communications security world, traffic analysis is an art in its own right.

Where communications interception normally aims for the gold standard of decrypted messages, in the real world it's often not possible to break the encryption. This means you're left with a large collection of apparently unintelligible data.

But there is still information to be gained by looking at who talks to whom, and how these communications correlate with other events. For example, we often hear of “increased chatter” prior to terrorist attacks, or you might see a leap in communications between two businesses prior to a merger or major deal.

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