Modeling Identity-Related Properties and Their Privacy Strength

In the last years several attempts to define identity-related properties such as identifiability, pseudonymity and anonymity have been made to analyze the privacy offered by information systems and protocols. However, these definitions are generally incomparable, making it difficult to generalize the results of their analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for formalizing and comparing identity-related properties. The framework employs the notions of detectability, associability and provability to assess the knowledge of an adversary. We show how these notions can be used to specify well-known identity-related properties and classify them with respect to their logical relations and privacy strength. We also demonstrate that the proposed framework is able to capture and compare several existing definitions of identity-related properties.

[1]  Vitaly Shmatikov,et al.  Information Hiding, Anonymity and Privacy: a Modular Approach , 2004, J. Comput. Secur..

[2]  Stefan Katzenbeisser,et al.  Measuring unlinkability revisited , 2008, WPES '08.

[3]  Paul F. Syverson,et al.  Group Principals and the Formalization of Anonymity , 1999, World Congress on Formal Methods.

[4]  Steve A. Schneider,et al.  CSP and Anonymity , 1996, ESORICS.

[5]  Günter Müller.  Emerging Trends in Information and Communication Security , 2006, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[6]  Bart Preneel,et al.  Towards Measuring Anonymity , 2002, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[7]  Sebastian Clauß,et al.  A Framework for Quantification of Linkability Within a Privacy-Enhancing Identity Management System , 2006, ETRICS.

[8]  S. Anderson,et al.  Secure Synthesis of Code: A Process Improvement Experiment , 1999, World Congress on Formal Methods.

[9]  A. Pfitzmann,et al.  A terminology for talking about privacy by data minimization: Anonymity, Unlinkability, Undetectability, Unobservability, Pseudonymity, and Identity Management , 2010 .

[10]  Daniele Micciancio,et al.  An Indistinguishability-Based Characterization of Anonymous Channels , 2008, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[11]  George Danezis,et al.  Towards an Information Theoretic Metric for Anonymity , 2002, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[12]  Colin Boyd,et al.  Advances in Cryptology - ASIACRYPT 2001 , 2001 .

[13]  Mihir Bellare,et al.  Key-Privacy in Public-Key Encryption , 2001, ASIACRYPT.

[14]  Milan Petkovic,et al.  Security, Privacy, and Trust in Modern Data Management , 2007, Data-Centric Systems and Applications.

[15]  Bart Preneel,et al.  Taxonomy of Mixes and Dummy Traffic , 2004, International Information Security Workshops.

[16]  Carl E. Landwehr,et al.  Basic concepts and taxonomy of dependable and secure computing , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.

[17]  David W. Chadwick,et al.  Federated Identity Management , 2009, FOSAD.

[18]  Konstantinos Chatzikokolakis,et al.  Spécification et vérification des protocoles de sécurité probabilistes. (Probabilistic and Information-Theoretic Approaches to Anonymity) , 2007 .

[19]  Stefan Köpsell,et al.  Modelling Unlinkability , 2003, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[20]  Michael Roe,et al.  Cryptography and evidence , 2010 .