English

Computing Maximal Per-Record Leakage and Leakage-Distortion Functions for Privacy Mechanisms under Entropy-Constrained Adversaries

Cryptography and Security 2026-03-27 v3

Abstract

The exponential growth of data collection necessitates robust privacy protections that preserve data utility. We address information disclosure against adversaries with bounded prior knowledge, modeled by an entropy constraint H(X)bH(X) \geq b. Within this information privacy framework -- which replaces differential privacy's independence assumption with a bounded-knowledge model -- we study three core problems: maximal per-record leakage, the primal leakage-distortion tradeoff (minimizing worst-case leakage under distortion DD), and the dual distortion minimization (minimizing distortion under leakage constraint LL). These problems resemble classical information-theoretic ones (channel capacity, rate-distortion) but are more complex due to high dimensionality and the entropy constraint. We develop efficient alternating optimization algorithms that exploit convexity-concavity duality, with theoretical guarantees including local convergence for the primal problem and convergence to a stationary point for the dual. Experiments on binary symmetric channels and modular sum queries validate the algorithms, showing improved privacy-utility tradeoffs over classical differential privacy mechanisms. This work provides a computational framework for auditing privacy risks and designing certified mechanisms under realistic adversary assumptions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.00689,
  title  = {Computing Maximal Per-Record Leakage and Leakage-Distortion Functions for Privacy Mechanisms under Entropy-Constrained Adversaries},
  author = {Genqiang Wu and Xiaoying Zhang and Yu Qi and Hao Wang and Jikui Wang and Yeping He},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.00689},
  year   = {2026}
}