k-DynMix: A Dynamic Privacy Protection Mechanism in Mix-Zones

• Ekler Paulino de Mattos UFMG / UFMS
• Augusto C. S. A. Domingues UFMG
• Fabrício A. Silva UFV
• Heitor S. R. Filho UFMG
• Antonio A. F. Loureiro UFMG

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbseg.2024.241574

Abstract

Mix-zones are an anonymization-based privacy protection mechanism used in various contexts against tracking attacks. However, mix-zones depend on factors that affect their performance, e.g., defining fair privacy levels. This work proposes k-DynMix, a dynamic mix-zone that adjusts the level of privacy over time in online mode and linear complexity, according to the flow of vehicles, to achieve greater anonymization. In the experiments, we analyzed real and synthetic datasets comparing k-DynMix with two prediction engines to estimate privacy over time and with classic mix-zones using mix-zone coverage and Anonymization Quality metrics. The results showed that k-DynMix outperformed the prediction engines in predicting privacy. Further to maximizing privacy, it achieved performance similar to the best result of classic mix-zones.

References

Beresford, A. R. and Stajano, F. (2003). Location privacy in pervasive computing. IEEE Pervasive computing, (1):46–55.

Beresford, A. R. and Stajano, F. (2004). Mix zones: User privacy in location-aware services. In Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, 2004. Proceedings of the Second IEEE Annual Conference on, pages 127–131. IEEE.

Chen, Z., Fu, Y., Zhang, M., Zhang, Z., and Li, H. (2018). A flexible mix-zone selection scheme towards trajectory privacy protection. In 17th IEEE TrustCom, pages 1180–1186.

Chow, C.-Y. and Mokbel, M. F. (2011). Trajectory privacy in location-based services and data publication. ACM Sigkdd Explorations Newsletter, 13(1):19–29.

de Mattos, E. P., Domingues, A. C., Santos, B. P., Ramos, H. S., and Loureiro, A. A. (2022). The Impact of Mobility on Location Privacy: A Perspective on Smart Mobility. IEEE Systems Journal.

de Mattos, E. P., Domingues, A. C., Silva, F. A., Ramos, H. S., and Loureiro, A. A. (2023). Slicing who slices: Anonymization quality evaluation on deployment, privacy, and utility in mix-zones. Computer Networks, 236:110007.

de Mattos, E. P., Domingues, A. C., Silva, F. A., Ramos, H. S., and Loureiro, A. A. (2024). Protect your data and I’ll rank its utility: A framework for utility analysis of anonymized mobility data for smart city applications. Ad Hoc Networks, page 103567.

Domingues, A. C., de Mattos, E. P., Silva, F. A., Ramos, H. S., and Loureiro, A. A. (2021). Social Mix-zones: Anonymizing Personal Information on Contact Tracing Data. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Wireless Ad Hoc, Sensor, & Ubiquitous Networks, pages 81–88.

Freudiger, J., Raya, M., Félegyházi, M., Papadimitratos, P., and Hubaux, J.-P. (2007). Mixzones for location privacy in vehicular networks. In Workshop on Wireless Networking for Intelligent Transportation Systems (WiN-ITS).

Hansun, S. (2013). A new approach of moving average method in time series analysis. In 2013 conference on new media studies (CoNMedia), pages 1–4. IEEE.

Khodaei, M. and Papadimitratos, P. (2020). Cooperative location privacy in vehicular networks: why simple mix zones are not enough. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 8(10):7985–8004.

Mattos, E. P., Domingues, A. C., and Loureiro, A. A. F. (2019). Give Me Two Points and I’ll Tell You Who You Are. In Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV’19). IEEE.

Mattos, E. P. d., Domingues, A. C., Silva, F. A., Ramos, H. S., and Loureiro, A. A. (2022). Behind the Mix-Zones Scenes: On the Evaluation of the Anonymization Quality. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Wireless Ad Hoc, Sensor, & Ubiquitous Networks, pages 133–140.

Mattos, E. P. d., Domingues, A. C., Silva, F. A., Ramos, H. S., and Loureiro, A. A. (2023). Protect your Data and I’ll Show Its Utility: A Practical View about Mix-zones Impacts on Mobility Data for Smart City Applications. In Proceedings of the Int’l ACM Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Wireless Ad Hoc, Sensor, & Ubiquitous Networks, pages 45–52.

Paiva, S., Ahad, M. A., Zafar, S., Tripathi, G., Khalique, A., and Hussain, I. (2020). Privacy and security challenges in smart and sustainable mobility. SN Applied Sciences, 2:1–10.

Palanisamy, B. and Liu, L. (2014). Attack-resilient mix-zones over road networks: architecture and algorithms. IEEE TMC, 14(3):495–508.

Paxson, V., Allman, M., Chu, J., and Sargent, M. (2011). Computing TCP’s retransmission timer. Technical report.

Piorkowski, M., Sarafijanovic-Djukic, N., and Grossglauser, M. (2009). CRAWDAD dataset epfl/mobility (v. 2009-02-24). Downloaded from [link].

Yamazaki, R., Yoshida, M., and Shigeno, H. (2021). A Dynamic Mix-zone Scheme Considering Communication Delay for Location Privacy in Vehicular Networks. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops), pages 245–250. IEEE.

Zhou, Y. and Zhang, D. (2019). Double Mix-Zone for Location Privacy in VANET. In 7th Int’l Conf. on Info. Tech.: IoT and Smart City, pages 322–327.