Efficient Tagging of Remote Peers During Child Pornography Investigations

My paper Efficient Tagging of Remote Peers During Child Pornography Investigations, written in collaboration with Brian Levine, Clay Shields, and Brian Lynn, has been accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.

In it, we examine the problems inherent in using various network- and application-level identifiers in the context of forensic measurement, as exemplified in the policing of peer-to-peer file sharing networks for sexually exploitative imagery of children. We present a one-year measurement performed in the law enforcement context. We propose a tagging method marks that remote machines by providing them with application- or system-level data that is valid, but which covertly has meaning to investigators. This tagging allows investigators to link network observations with physical evidence in a legal, forensically strong, and valid manner.