Traffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observed, or even intercepted and stored, the more can be inferred from the traffic. Traffic analysis can be performed in the context of military intelligence or counter-intelligence, and is a concern in computer security.
Traffic analysis tasks may be supported by dedicated computer software programs, including commercially available programs such as those offered by i2, Visual Analytics, Memex, Orion Scientific, Pacific Northwest National Labs, Genesis EW's GenCOM Suite, SynerScope and others. Advanced traffic analysis techniques may include various forms of social network analysis.
Read more about Traffic Analysis: In Military Intelligence, Examples, In Computer Security, Countermeasures
Famous quotes containing the words traffic and/or analysis:
“There’s something about the dead silence of an office building at night. Not quite real. The traffic down below is something that didn’t have anything to do with me.”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)