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Traffic Analysis

nounverified· unreviewed·updated Aug 30, 2026

The analysis of patterns in communications for the purpose of gaining intelligence about a system or its users. It does not require examination of the content of the communications, which may or may not be decipherable. For example, an adversary may be able to detect a signal from a reader that could enable it to infer that a particular activity is occurring (e.g., a shipment has arrived, someone is entering a facility) without necessarily learning an identifier or associated data.

polysemousMWENISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2

Senses

NISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2

A form of passive attack in which an intruder observes information about calls (although not necessarily the contents of the messages) and makes inferences, e.g., from the source and destination numbers, or frequency and length of the messages.

NISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2sense 3 pending review

Gaining knowledge of information by inference from observable characteristics of a data flow, even if the information is not directly available (e.g., when the data is encrypted). These characteristics include the identities and locations of the source(s) and destination(s) of the flow, and the flow's presence, amount, frequency, and duration of occurrence.

Classifications

Entity Type

Threat0%rule-basedmulti_axis_classifier_low_confidence.v1
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Sensitivity

60%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
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Information Class

70%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
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Variants

plural
Traffic Analyses
possessive
Traffic Analysis's
pluralpossessive
Traffic Analyses'