Digital Privacy Under Attack: Challenges and Enablers

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2302.09258v3
• Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 09:23:37 GMT
• Title: Digital Privacy Under Attack: Challenges and Enablers
• Authors: Baobao Song, Shiva Raj Pokhrel, Mengyue Deng, Qiujun Lan, Robin Doss, Gang Li,
• Abstract summary: We systematically categorize attacks targeting three domains: anonymous data, statistical aggregates, and privacy-preserving models.<n>For each category, we analyze attack methodologies, adversary capabilities, and vulnerability mechanisms.<n>Our analysis reveals that while differential privacy offers strong theoretical guarantees, it faces implementation challenges and potential vulnerabilities to emerging attacks.
• Score: 11.061112334099597
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: We present a comprehensive analysis of privacy attacks and countermeasures in data-driven systems. We systematically categorize attacks targeting three domains: anonymous data (linkage and structural attacks), statistical aggregates (reconstruction and differential attacks), and privacy-preserving models (extraction, reconstruction, membership inference, and inversion attacks). For each category, we analyze attack methodologies, adversary capabilities, and vulnerability mechanisms. We further evaluate countermeasures including perturbation techniques, randomization methods, query auditing, and model-level defenses, examining their effectiveness and inherent privacy-utility tradeoffs. Our analysis reveals that while differential privacy offers strong theoretical guarantees, it faces implementation challenges and potential vulnerabilities to emerging attacks. We identify critical research directions and provide researchers and practitioners with a structured framework for understanding privacy resilience in increasingly complex data ecosystems.

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