Bokeh: Obfuscating physical infrastructure maps

Abstract

Physical infrastructures that facilitate e.g., delivery of power, water and communication capabilities are of intrinsic importance in our daily lives. Accurate maps of physical infrastructures are important for permitting, maintenance, repair and growth but can be considered a commercial and/or security risk. In this paper, we describe a method for obfuscating physical infrastructure maps that removes sensitive details while preserving key features that are important in commercial and research applications. We employ a three-tiered approach: tier 1 does simple location fuzzing, tier 2 maintains connectivity details but randomizes node/link locations, while at tier 3 only distributional properties of a network are preserved. We implement our tiered approach in a tool called Bokeh which operates on GIS shapefiles that include detailed location information of infrastructure and produces obfuscated maps. We describe a case study that applies Bokeh to a number of Internet Service Provider maps. The case study highlights how each tier removes increasing amounts of detail from maps. We discuss how Bokeh can be generally applied to other physical infrastructures or in local services that are increasingly used for e-marketing.