Machine-driven crowd-disambiguation of data resources
Embodiments seek to protect privacy of potentially sensitive client resources in web transactions using crowd-disambiguation. Crowd-disambiguation machines can aggregate information about resources from multiple clients as resource fingerprints, and can use the fingerprints to provide crowd-sourced services in a privacy-protected manner. For example, embodiments can communicate a resource fingerprint as a fully ambiguated resource instance (FARI) and a partially disambiguated resource instance (PDRI). When one (or few) clients communicates the resource fingerprint, the identity of the resource remains obfuscated from the crowd-disambiguation machine. As more clients communicate fingerprints for the same resource (e.g., identified by the matching FARIs), respective, differently generated PDRIs of those fingerprints enable the crowd-disambiguation machine to resolve further portions of the resource, ultimately permitting the resource to be revealed and considered non-private (e.g., for use in hint generation or other crowd-sourced services).
1. A method for resolving private hints, the method comprising:
receiving a first resource fingerprint of an invoked resource from a client machine over a communications network, the first resource fingerprint comprising a first part and a second part;
executing a disambiguation function on the second part of the first resource fingerprint to resolve a portion of the second part;
identifying, within a plurality of stored resource fingerprints, a first set of stored fingerprints that include the first part of the first resource fingerprint;
identifying, within the first set of stored fingerprints, a first set of resolved second portions;
formulating an aggregated resolved second part of the invoked resource from the resolved portion of the second part and the first set of resolved second portions;
determining whether the aggregated resolved second part satisfies a disambiguation threshold; and
responsive to determining that the aggregated resolved second part of the invoked resource satisfies the disambiguation threshold, storing the invoked resource as a whitelisted resource in a whitelist data store.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first part includes a fully ambiguated resource instance (FARI) of the invoked resource and the second part includes a partially disambiguated resource instance (PDRI) of the invoked resource.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first resource fingerprint further comprises a third part, wherein the third part includes a disambiguation schema.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the disambiguation function is executed on the second part based on the disambiguation schema.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first part is generated by applying an ambiguation function to an URL of the invoked resource.
6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the ambiguation function is a strong one-way cryptographic function of an URL of the invoked resource.
7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the ambiguation function is MD5.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second part is generated by applying a lossy transform of a URL of the invoked resource.
9. The method of claim 2 , wherein the disambiguation threshold is a probability of resolving all characters of a URL of the invoked resource.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the disambiguation threshold is met when enough bits of a resource string are resolved to enable automatic disambiguation of remaining bits to a predetermined confidence level.
11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising including the whitelisted resource in hinting services across users.
12. A system for resolving private hints, the system comprising:
one or more processors; and
memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to:
receive a first resource fingerprint of an invoked resource from a client machine over a communications network, the first resource fingerprint comprising a first part and a second part; and
execute a disambiguation function on the second part of the first resource fingerprint to resolve a portion of the second part;
identify, within a plurality of stored resource fingerprints, a first set of stored fingerprints that include the first part of the first resource fingerprint;
identify, within the first set of stored fingerprints, a first set of resolved second portions;
formulate an aggregated resolved second part of the invoked resource from the resolved portion of the second part and the first set of resolved second portions;
determine whether the aggregated resolved second part satisfies a disambiguation threshold; and
responsive to determining that the aggregated resolved second part of the invoked resource satisfies the disambiguation threshold, store the invoked resource as a whitelisted resource in a whitelist data store.
13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the first part includes a fully ambiguated resource instance (FARI) of the invoked resource and the second part includes a partially disambiguated resource instance (PDRI) of the invoked resource.
14. The system of claim 12 , wherein the first resource fingerprint further comprises a third part, wherein the third part includes a disambiguation schema.
15. The system of claim 14 , wherein the disambiguation function is executed on the second part based on the disambiguation schema.
16. The system of claim 12 , wherein the first part is generated by applying an ambiguation function to an URL of the invoked resource.
17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the ambiguation function is a strong one-way cryptographic function of an URL of the invoked resource.
18. The system of claim 17 , wherein the ambiguation function is MD5.
19. The system of claim 12 , wherein the second part is generated by applying a lossy transform of a URL of the invoked resource.
20. The system of claim 12 , wherein the disambiguation threshold is a probability of resolving all characters of a URL of the invoked resource.