StarClique: guaranteeing user privacy in social networks against intersection attacks

Building on the popularity of online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook, social content-sharing applications allow users to form communities around shared interests. Millions of users worldwide use them to share recommendations on everything from music and books to resources on the web. However, their increasing popularity is beginning to attract the attention of malicious attackers. As social network credentials become valued targets of phishing attacks and social worms, attackers look to leverage compromised accounts for further financial gain. In this paper, we analyze the state of privacy protection in social content-sharing applications, describe effective privacy attacks against today's social networks, and propose anonymization techniques to protect users. We show that simple protection mechanisms such as anonymizing shared data can still leave users open to social intersection attacks, where a small number of compromised users can identify the originators of shared c...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CONEXT
• Authors: Krishna P. N. Puttaswamy, Alessandra Sala, Ben Y. Zhao
• Keywords: Computer Networks, CONEXT 2009, Social, Social Content-sharing Applications, Social Networks