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Attack-resilient mix-zones over road networks: Architecture and algorithms

Palanisamy, B and Liu, L (2015) Attack-resilient mix-zones over road networks: Architecture and algorithms. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 14 (3). 495 - 508. ISSN 1536-1233

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Abstract

Continuous exposure of location information, even with spatially cloaked resolution, may lead to breaches of location privacy due to statistics-based inference attacks. An alternative and complementary approach to spatial cloaking based location anonymization is to break the continuity of location exposure by introducing techniques, such as mix-zones, where no application can trace user movements. Several factors impact on the effectiveness of mix-zone approach, such as user population, mix-zone geometry, location sensing rate and spatial resolution, as well as spatial and temporal constraints on user movement patterns. However, most of the existing mix-zone proposals fail to provide effective mix-zone construction and placement algorithms that are resilient to timing and transition attacks. This paper presents MobiMix, a road network based mix-zone framework to protect location privacy of mobile users traveling on road networks. It makes three original contributions. First, we provide the formal analysis on the vulnerabilities of directly applying theoretical rectangle mix-zones to road networks in terms of anonymization effectiveness and resilience to timing and transition attacks. Second, we develop a suite of road network mix-zone construction methods that effectively consider the above mentioned factors to provide higher level of resilience to timing and transition attacks, and yield a specified lower-bound on the level of anonymity. Third, we present a set of mix-zone placement algorithms that identify the best set of road intersections for mix-zone placement considering the road network topology, user mobility patterns and road characteristics. We evaluate the MobiMix approach through extensive experiments conducted on traces produced by GTMobiSim on different scales of geographic maps. Our experiments show that MobiMix offers high level of anonymity and high level of resilience to timing and transition attacks, compared to existing mix-zone approaches.


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Details

Item Type: Article
Status: Published
Creators/Authors:
CreatorsEmailPitt UsernameORCID
Palanisamy, BBPALAN@pitt.eduBPALAN
Liu, L
Centers: Other Centers, Institutes, Offices, or Units > Center for Bioengineering
Date: 1 March 2015
Date Type: Publication
Access Restriction: No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately.
Journal or Publication Title: IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
Volume: 14
Number: 3
Page Range: 495 - 508
DOI or Unique Handle: 10.1109/tmc.2014.2321747
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Schools and Programs: School of Information Sciences > Information Science
Refereed: Yes
ISSN: 1536-1233
Date Deposited: 30 Jun 2014 18:22
Last Modified: 30 Mar 2021 13:55
URI: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22051

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