Researcher develops technique to track PCs behind networks

A doctoral student at the University of California has uncovered a technique that could allow supposedly anonymous web usage to be tracked back to specific computers. The research, by Tadayoshi Kohno, concerns "exploiting small,
microscopic deviations in device hardware: clock skews," which are transmitted in outgoing packets, even when a computer is behind a firewall. As reported by News.com, Kohno has tested the technique on computers running versions of Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Unix, and in all cases was able to identify the individual machines. News.com points out,
however, that Kohno's research will likely lead to new techniques to protect users, such as improved random-number generation to mask time skews. In the meantime, stay paranoid: you already know they're watching you, so act accordingly.