ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The satisfaction that accompanies that the successful completion of any task would be incomplete without the mention of people whose ceaseless cooperation made it possible, whose constant guidance and encouragement crown all efforts with success. I m grateful to my project guide Mrs. Priya Choudhary for the guidance, inspiration and constructive suggestions that helpful me in the preparation of this project.
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the Project Work titled Data Leakage Detection is a bonafide work of Atul Kumar Singh, carried out in partial fulfillment for the award of degree of BTECH-3ND YEAR[GBTU] under my guidance. This project work is original and not submitted earlier for the award of any degree of any other University.
ABSTRACT
We study the following problem: A data distributor has given sensitive data to a set of supposedly trusted agents (third parties). Some of the data are leaked and found in an unauthorized place (e.g., on the web or somebodys laptop). The distributor must assess the likelihood that the leaked data came from one or more agents, as opposed to having been independently gathered by other means. We propose data allocation strategies (across the agents) that improve the probability of identifying leakages. These methods do not rely on alterations of the released data (e.g., watermarks). In some cases, we can also inject realistic but fake data records to further improve our chances of detecting leakage and identifying the guilty party.
Key Terms-Allocation strategies, data leakage, data privacy, fake records, leakage model.
CONTENTS
Introduction Techniques Used Conclusion Limitations References
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3 4 5
CONTENTS
Creating watermarking Watermarking algorithm Graph Showing Perturbation Process Of Data Loss Evaluation Of Explicit data request Evaluation Of Sample data request
3 4 5 6
INTRODUCTION
IN the course of doing business, sometimes sensitive data must be handed over to supposedly trusted third parties. For example, a hospital may give patient records to researchers who will devise new treatments. Similarly, a company may have partnerships with other companies that require sharing customer data. Another enterprise may outsource its data processing, so data must be given to various other companies. Our goal is to detect when the distributors sensitive data has been leaked by agents, and if possible to identify the agent that leaked the data. Perturbation is a very useful technique where the data is modified and made less sensitive before being handed to agents. We consider applications where the original sensitive data cannot be perturbed. Perturbation is a very useful technique where the data are modified and made less sensitive before being handed to agents. For example, one can add random noise to certain attributes, or one can replace exact values by ranges [4]. However, in some cases, it is important not to alter the original distributors data. For example, if an outsourcer is doing our payroll, he must have the exact salary and customer bank account numbers. If medical researchers will be treating patients (as opposed to simply computing statistics), they may need accurate data for the patients. Traditionally, leakage detection is handled by watermarking, e.g., a unique code is embedded in each distributed copy. If that copy is later discovered in the hands of an unauthorized party, the leaker can be identified. Watermarks can be very useful in some cases, but again, involve some modification of the original data. Furthermore, watermarks can sometimes be destroyed if the data recipient is malicious. Here we study unobtrusive techniques for detecting leakage of a set of objects or records.
Creating a watermark we study the following scenario: After giving a set of objects to agents, the distributor discovers some of those same objects in an unauthorized place. (For example, the data may be found on a website, or may be obtained through a legal discovery process.) At this point, the distributor can assess the likelihood that the leaked data came from one or more agents, as opposed to having been independently gathered by other means. Using an analogy with cookies stolen from a cookie jar, if we catch Freddie with a single cookie, he can argue that a friend gave him the cookie. But if we catch Freddie with five cookies, it will be much harder for him to argue that his hands were not in the cookie jar. If the distributor sees enough evidence that an agent leaked data, he may stop doing business with him, or may initiate legal proceedings.
DIGITAL WATERMARKING:
Digital watermarking is the process of embedding information into a digital signal which may be used to verify its authenticity or the identity of its owners, in the same manner as paper bearing a watermark for visible identification. In digital watermarking, the signal may be audio, pictures, or video. If the signal is copied, then the information also is carried in the copy. A signal may carry several different watermarks at the same time. Paul Levinson Future of the Information Revolution (1997), where he called for the use "smart patent numbers" (p. 202), or the embedding of electronic chips in every piece of technology, which would give an updated listing of all of its inventors. In visible digital watermarking, the information is visible in the picture or video. Typically, the information is text or a logo, which identifies the owner of the media. The image on the right has a visible watermark. When a television broadcaster adds its logo to the corner of transmitted video, this also is a visible watermark. In invisible digital watermarking, information is added as digital data to audio, picture, or video, but it cannot be perceived as such (although it may be possible to detect that some amount of information is hidden in the signal). The watermark may be intended for widespread use and thus, is made easy to retrieve or, it may be a form of stenography, where a party communicates a secret message embedded in the digital signal. In either case, as in visible watermarking, the objective is to attach ownership or other descriptive information to the signal in a way that is difficult to remove. It also is possible to use hidden embedded information as a means of covert communication between individuals. One application of watermarking is in copyright protection systems, which are intended to prevent or deter unauthorized copying of digital media. In this use, a copy device retrieves the watermark from the signal before making a copy; the device makes a decision whether to copy or not, depending on the contents of the watermark. Another application is in source tracing. A watermark is embedded into a digital signal at each point of distribution. If a copy of the work is found later, then the watermark may be retrieved from the copy and the source of the distribution is known. This technique reportedly has been used to detect the source of illegally copied movies.
Annotation of digital photographs with descriptive information is another application of invisible watermarking.
PERTURBATION TECHNIQUE:
Perturbation is a very useful technique where the data are modified and made less sensitive before being handed to agents. For example, one can add random noise to certain attributes, or one can replace exact values by ranges [4].
Graph showing perturbation However, in some cases, it is important not to alter the original distributors data. For example, if an outsourcer is doing our payroll, he must have the exact salary and customer bank account numbers. If medical researchers will be treating patients (as opposed to simply computing statistics), they may need accurate data for the patients.
UNOBTRUSIVE TECHNIQUES:
In this section we develop a model for assessing the guilt of agents. We also present algorithms for distributing objects to agents, in a way that improves our chances of identifying a leaker. Finally, we also consider the option of adding fake objects to the distributed set. Such objects do not correspond to real entities but appear realistic to the agents. In a sense, the fake objects acts as a type of watermark for the entire set, without modifying any individual members. If it turns out an agent was given one or more fake objects that were leaked, then the distributor can be more confident that agent was guilty.
Typical Block Diagram Showing the Process of Data Loss In Blocking spam.
GUILT AGENTS
Suppose that after giving objects to agents, the distributor discovers that a set S _ T has leaked. This means that some third party, called the target, has been caught in possession of S. For example, this target may be displaying S on its website, or perhaps as part of a legal discovery process, the target turned over S to the distributor. Since the agents U1; . . . ; Un have some of the data, it is reasonable to suspect them leaking the data. However, the agents can argue that they are innocent, and that the S data were obtained by the target through other means. For example, say that one of the objects in S represents a customer X. Perhaps X is also a customer of some other company, and that company provided the data to the target. Or perhaps X can be reconstructed from various publicly available sources on the web. Our goal is to estimate the likelihood that the leaked data came from the agents as opposed to other sources. Intuitively, the more data in S, the harder it is for the agents to argue they did not leak anything. Similarly, the rarer the objects, the harder it is to argue that the target obtained them through other means. Not only do we want to estimate the likelihood the agents leaked data, but we would also like to find out if one of them, in particular, was more likely to be the leaker. For instance, if one of the S objects was only given to agent U1, while the other objects were given to all agents, we may suspect U1 more. The model we present next captures this intuition. We say an agent Ui is guilty and if it contributes one or more objects to the target. We denote the event that agent Ui is guilty by Gi and the event that agent Ui is guilty for a given leaked set S by Gi|S. Our next step is to estimate Pr{Gi|S}, i.e., the probability that agent Ui is guilty given evidence S.
RELATED WORK:
The guilt detection approach we present is related to the data provenance problem: tracing the lineage of S objects implies essentially the detection of the guilty agents. Tutorial [1] provides a good overview on the research conducted in this field. Suggested solutions are domain specific, such as lineage tracing for data warehouses, and assume some prior knowledge on the way a data view is created out of data sources. Our problem formulation with objects and sets is more general and simplifies lineage tracing, since we do not consider any data transformation from Ri sets to S. As far as the data allocation strategies are concerned, our work is mostly relevant to watermarking that is used as a means of establishing original ownership of distributed objects. Watermarks were initially used in images [5], video [5], and audio data [5] whose digital representation includes considerable redundancy. Recently, [1], and other works have also studied marks insertion to relational data. Our approach and watermarking are similar in the sense of providing agents with some kind of receiver identifying information. However, by its very nature, a watermark modifies the item being watermarked. If the object to be watermarked cannot be modified, then a watermark cannot be inserted. In such cases, methods that attach watermarks to the distributed data are not applicable. Finally, there are also lots of other works on mechanisms that allow only authorized users to access sensitive data through access control policies. Such approaches prevent in some sense data leakage by sharing information only with trusted parties. However, these policies are restrictive and may make it impossible to satisfy agents requests
ALGORITHMS:
1. Evaluation of Explicit Data Request Algorithms
In the first place, the goal of these experiments was to see whether fake objects in the distributed data sets yield significant improvement in our chances of detecting a guilty agent. In the second place, we wanted to evaluate our e-optimal algorithm relative to a random allocation.
Evaluation of EXPLICIT data request algorithms. We focus on scenarios with a few objects that are shared among multiple agents. These are the most interesting scenarios, since object sharing makes it difficult to distinguish a guilty from non-guilty agents. Scenarios with more objects to distribute or scenarios with objects shared among fewer agents are obviously easier to handle. As far as scenarios with many objects to distribute and many overlapping agent requests are concerned, they are similar to the scenarios we study, since we can map them to the distribution of many small subsets.
MODULES:
1. Data Allocation Module:
The main focus of our project is the data allocation problem as how can the distributor intelligently give data to agents in order to improve the chances of detecting a guilty agent.
3. Optimization Module:
The Optimization Module is the distributors data allocation to agents has one constraint and one objective. The distributors constraint is to satisfy agents requests, by providing them with the number of objects they request or with all available objects that satisfy their conditions. His objective is to be able to detect an agent who leaks any portion of his data.
4. Data Distributor:
A data distributor has given sensitive data to a set of supposedly trusted agents (third parties). Some of the data is leaked and found in an unauthorized place (e.g., on the web or somebodys laptop). The distributor must assess the likelihood that the leaked data came from one or more agents, as opposed to having been independently gathered by other means.
FAKE OBJECTS
The distributor may be able to add fake objects to the distributed data in order to improve his effectiveness in detecting guilty agents. However, fake objects may impact the correctness of what agents do, so they may not always be allowable. The idea of perturbing data to detect leakage is not new, e.g., [1]. However, in most cases, individual objects are perturbed, e.g., by adding random noise to sensitive salaries, or adding a watermark to an image. In our case, we are perturbing the set of distributor objects by adding fake elements. In some applications, fake objects may cause fewer problems that perturbing real objects. For example, say that the distributed data objects are medical records and the agents are hospitals. In this case, even small modifications to the records of actual patients may be undesirable. However, the addition of some fake medical records may be acceptable, since no patient matches these records, and hence, no one will ever be treated based on fake records. Our use of fake objects is inspired by the use of trace records in mailing lists. In this case, company A sells to company B a mailing list to be used once (e.g., to send advertisements). Company A adds trace records that contain addresses owned by company A. Thus, each time company B uses the purchased mailing list, A receives copies of the mailing. These records are a type of fake objects that help identify improper use of data. The distributor creates and adds fake objects to the data that he distributes to agents. We let Fi _ Ri be the subset of fake objects that agent Ui receives. As discussed below, fake objects must be created carefully so that agents cannot distinguish them from real objects.
In many cases, the distributor may be limited in how many fake objects he can create. For example, objects may contain e-mail addresses, and each fake e-mail address may require the creation of an actual inbox (otherwise, the agent may discover that the object is fake). The inboxes can actually be monitored by the distributor: if e-mail is received from someone other than the agent who was given the address, it is evident that the address was leaked. Since creating and monitoring e-mail accounts consumes resources, the distributor may have a limit of fake objects. If there is a limit, we denote it by B fake objects. Similarly, the distributor may want to limit the number of fake objects received by each agent so as to not arouse suspicions and to not adversely impact the agents activities. Thus, we say that the distributor can send up to bi fake objects to agent Ui. The distributor can also use function CREATEFAKEOBJECT() when it wants to send the same fake object to a set of agents. In this case, the function arguments are the union of the Ri and Fi tables, respectively, and the intersection of the conditions condis. Although we do not deal with the implementation of CREATEFAKEOBJECT(), we note that there are two main design options. The function can either produce a fake object on demand every time it is called or it can return an appropriate object from a pool of objects created in advance.
LIMITATIONS
Traditionally, leakage detection is handled by watermarking, e.g., a unique code is embedded in each distributed copy. If that copy is later discovered in the hands of an unauthorized party, the leaker can be identified. Watermarks can be very useful in some cases, but again, involve some modification of the original data. Furthermore, watermarks can sometimes be destroyed if the data recipient is malicious. E.g. A hospital may give patient records to researchers who will devise new treatments. Similarly, a company may have partnerships with other companies that require sharing customer data. Another enterprise may outsource its data processing, so data must be given to various other companies. We call the owner of the data the distributor and the supposedly trusted third parties the agents.
CONCLUSION:
In a perfect world, there would be no need to hand over sensitive data to agents that may unknowingly or maliciously leak it. And even if we had to hand over sensitive data, in a perfect world, we could watermark each object so that we could trace its origins with absolute certainty. However, in many cases, we must indeed work with agents that may not be 100 percent trusted, and we may not be certain if a leaked object came from an agent or from some other source, since certain data cannot admit watermarks. In spite of these difficulties, we have shown that it is possible to assess the likelihood that an agent is responsible for a leak, based on the overlap of his data with the leaked data and the data of other agents, and based on the probability that objects can be guessed by other means. Our model is relatively simple, but we believe that it captures the essential trade-offs. The algorithms we have presented implement a variety of data distribution strategies that can improve the distributors chances of identifying a leaker. We have shown that distributing objects judiciously can make a significant difference in identifying guilty agents, especially in cases where there is large overlap in the data that agents must receive.
REFERENCES:
[1] P. Papadimitriou and H. Garcia-Molina, Data Leakage Detection,technical report, Stanford Univ., 2008. [2] http://www.finalsemprojects.com [3] http://www.wikipedia.org
[4] http://en.scientificcommons.org
[5] J.J.K.O. Ruanaidh, W.J. Dowling, and F.M. Boland, Watermarking Digital Images for Copyright Protection, IEE Proc. Vision,Signal and Image Processing,