🤖 AI Summary
Existing privacy threat modeling approaches adopt a single-user-centric paradigm, rendering them inadequate for capturing Interdependent Privacy (IDP)—a phenomenon wherein one user’s actions inadvertently compromise the privacy of others, including non-users. This challenge is exacerbated in third-party application ecosystems due to permission misuse, unregulated API invocations, and cross-entity behavioral coupling. To address this gap, we propose IDPA, the first threat modeling method explicitly designed for IDP. IDPA extends the LINDDUN framework by integrating permission flow analysis, API call graph modeling, and multi-stakeholder behavioral modeling—thereby shifting from a monolithic to a relational, system-level perspective. An empirical study conducted within the WeChat ecosystem demonstrates that IDPA systematically identifies six novel IDP threat categories—such as passive exposure of non-user data and authorization chain leakage—that are entirely missed by conventional methods. Results show a substantial improvement in privacy risk detection capability, establishing a new paradigm for privacy governance in platformized digital environments.
📝 Abstract
The rise of online social networks, user-gene-rated content, and third-party apps made data sharing an inevitable trend, driven by both user behavior and the commercial value of personal information. As service providers amass vast amounts of data, safeguarding individual privacy has become increasingly challenging. Privacy threat modeling has emerged as a critical tool for identifying and mitigating risks, with methodologies such as LINDDUN, xCOMPASS, and PANOPTIC offering systematic approaches. However, these frameworks primarily focus on threats arising from interactions between a single user and system components, often overlooking interdependent privacy (IDP); the phenomenon where one user's actions affect the privacy of other users and even non-users. IDP risks are particularly pronounced in third-party applications, where platform permissions, APIs, and user behavior can lead to unintended and unconsented data sharing, such as in the Cambridge Analytica case. We argue that existing threat modeling approaches are limited in exposing IDP-related threats, potentially underestimating privacy risks. To bridge this gap, we propose a specialized methodology that explicitly focuses on interdependent privacy. Our contributions are threefold: (i) we identify IDP-specific challenges and limitations in current threat modeling frameworks, (ii) we create IDPA, a threat modeling approach tailored to IDP threats, and (iii) we validate our approach through a case study on WeChat. We believe that IDPA can operate effectively on systems other than third-party apps and may motivate further research on specialized threat modeling.