NDSS 2025 – Impact Tracing: Identifying The Culprit Of Misinformation In Encrypted Messaging Systems

This NDSS conference paper introduces "Impact Tracing," a privacy-aware tracing method for encrypted messaging systems that identifies influential spreaders of misinformation while protecting non-influential users by introducing noise. The work positions itself between message traceback (which tracks all dissemination paths but risks privacy) and source tracing (which preserves privacy but limits traceability), and claims formal security proofs and differential privacy guarantees; the document is a research synopsis syndicated via a security blog.