Optimal De-Anonymization in Random Graphs with Community Structure

Abstract: Anonymized social network graphs published for academic or advertisement purposes are subject to de-anonymization attacks by leveraging side information in the form of a second, public social network graph correlated with the anonymized graph. This is because the two are from the same underlying graph of true social relationships. In this paper, we (i) characterize the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimates of user identities for the anonymized graph and (ii) provide sufficient conditions for successful de-anonymization for underlying graphs with community structure. Our results generalize prior work that assumed underlying graphs of Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi type, in addition to proving the optimality of the attack strategy adopted in the prior work.