Data Poisoning Attacks to Locally Differentially Private Range Query Protocols

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liao, Ting-Wei, Lin, Chih-Hsun, Tsai, Yu-Lin, Murakami, Takao, Yu, Chia-Mu, Sakuma, Jun, Huang, Chun-Ying, Kikuchi, Hiroaki
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liao, Ting-Wei
Lin, Chih-Hsun
Tsai, Yu-Lin
Murakami, Takao
Yu, Chia-Mu
Sakuma, Jun
Huang, Chun-Ying
Kikuchi, Hiroaki
author_facet Liao, Ting-Wei
Lin, Chih-Hsun
Tsai, Yu-Lin
Murakami, Takao
Yu, Chia-Mu
Sakuma, Jun
Huang, Chun-Ying
Kikuchi, Hiroaki
contents Local Differential Privacy (LDP) has been widely adopted to protect user privacy in decentralized data collection. However, recent studies have revealed that LDP protocols are vulnerable to data poisoning attacks, where malicious users manipulate their reported data to distort aggregated results. In this work, we present the first study on data poisoning attacks targeting LDP range query protocols, focusing on both tree-based and grid-based approaches. We identify three key challenges in executing such attacks, including crafting consistent and effective fake data, maintaining data consistency across levels or grids, and preventing server detection. To address the first two challenges, we propose novel attack methods that are provably optimal, including a tree-based attack and a grid-based attack, designed to manipulate range query results with high effectiveness. \textbf{Our key finding is that the common post-processing procedure, Norm-Sub, in LDP range query protocols can help the attacker massively amplify their attack effectiveness.} In addition, we study a potential countermeasure, but also propose an adaptive attack capable of evading this defense to address the third challenge. We evaluate our methods through theoretical analysis and extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets. Our results show that the proposed attacks can significantly amplify estimations for arbitrary range queries by manipulating a small fraction of users, providing 5-10x more influence than a normal user to the estimation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_03454
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Data Poisoning Attacks to Locally Differentially Private Range Query Protocols
Liao, Ting-Wei
Lin, Chih-Hsun
Tsai, Yu-Lin
Murakami, Takao
Yu, Chia-Mu
Sakuma, Jun
Huang, Chun-Ying
Kikuchi, Hiroaki
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
Local Differential Privacy (LDP) has been widely adopted to protect user privacy in decentralized data collection. However, recent studies have revealed that LDP protocols are vulnerable to data poisoning attacks, where malicious users manipulate their reported data to distort aggregated results. In this work, we present the first study on data poisoning attacks targeting LDP range query protocols, focusing on both tree-based and grid-based approaches. We identify three key challenges in executing such attacks, including crafting consistent and effective fake data, maintaining data consistency across levels or grids, and preventing server detection. To address the first two challenges, we propose novel attack methods that are provably optimal, including a tree-based attack and a grid-based attack, designed to manipulate range query results with high effectiveness. \textbf{Our key finding is that the common post-processing procedure, Norm-Sub, in LDP range query protocols can help the attacker massively amplify their attack effectiveness.} In addition, we study a potential countermeasure, but also propose an adaptive attack capable of evading this defense to address the third challenge. We evaluate our methods through theoretical analysis and extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets. Our results show that the proposed attacks can significantly amplify estimations for arbitrary range queries by manipulating a small fraction of users, providing 5-10x more influence than a normal user to the estimation.
title Data Poisoning Attacks to Locally Differentially Private Range Query Protocols
topic Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03454