ASAP: Eliminating algorithm-based disclosure in privacy-preserving data publishing

Numerous privacy-preserving data publishing algorithms were proposed to achieve privacy guarantees such as ℓ‐diversityℓ‐diversity. Many of them, however, were recently found to be vulnerable to algorithm-based disclosure—i.e., privacy leakage incurred by an adversary who is aware of the privacy-preserving algorithm being used. This paper describes generic techniques for correcting the design of existing privacy-preserving data publishing algorithms to eliminate algorithm-based disclosure. We first show that algorithm-based disclosure is more prevalent and serious than previously studied. Then, we strictly define Algorithm-SAfe Publishing (ASAP) to capture and eliminate threats from algorithm-based disclosure. To correct the problems of existing data publishing algorithms, we propose two generic tools to be integrated in their design: global look-ahead and local look-ahead. To enhance data utility, we propose another generic tool called stratified pick-up  . We demonstrate the effectiveness of our tools by applying them to several popular ℓ‐diversityℓ‐diversity algorithms: Mondrian, Hilb, and MASK. We conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of our tools in terms of data utility and efficiency.

► We find that the space of algorithm-based disclosure is much broader than previously discovered. ► We propose a testing tool for checking whether a given data publishing algorithm is vulnerable to algorithm-based disclosure. ► We develop two tools, global look-ahead and local look-ahead, for revising the design of existing algorithms to follow ASAP. ► We devise another tool, stratified pick-up to improve the utility of published data without violating ASAP.