Doxxing is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual. It is also a scourge on our internet lives that can quickly boil over into the physical realm. Often wielded as a weapon of hate or manipulation and a tactic for intimidation doxxing easily leads to real-world threats of violence, financial harm, sexual assault, career damage, or even murder. Examples of these impacts can be seen surrounding the recent events of 'GamerGate' through the targeting of Anita Sarkeesian, Felicia Day, Tara Long, and Brianna Wu. Doxxing also often leads to another tragic outcome; that of targets for hate being misidentified leading to unaffiliated individuals becoming the subjects of attack. Occurrences of this can be found in such online sagas as Anonymous vs. Scientology, the Amanda Todd case, and the incorrect fingering of Sunil Tripathi as the Boston Bomber. Given the real world impacts of being doxxed what can we do to protect ourselves, our friends, and our loved ones? In this talk I will highlight common methods employed by doxxers as well as methods to safeguard the information they seek. I will move from the easy wins and low-hanging fruit, with an eye for practicality, to the more complex and long-term defenses employed by professionals. While this is a pertinent topic for everyone I believe it is especially important for those who's livelihoods involve spending copious amounts of time interacting with the internet. Our Doxxing attack surfaces are often much larger than others.

Benjamin Brown currently works on systems safety, adversarial resilience, and threat intelligence at Akamai Technologies. He has experience in the non-profit, academic, and corporate worlds as well as degrees in both Anthropology and International Studies. Research interests include novel and side-channel attack vectors, radio systems, the psychology and anthropology of information security, metacognitive techniques, threat actor profiling, intelligence analysis, and thinking about security as an ecology of complex systems. https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=88339064

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