privacy: fix a real leak - global IPv6 addresses were uploaded verbatim
Setting out to build the machine-readable schema, the first step was checking whether the anonymizer covers the fields the schema declares sensitive. It did not, and five identifying values were going out at the `balanced` level: networks[].link.addresses[].addr the device's own global IPv6 address networks[].link.routes[].gateway the ISP allocation networks[].link.dns.servers[] the configured resolver private_dns_hostname an internal hostname search_domains[] the internal domain The settings screen describes that level as pseudonymizing addresses. Root cause: classification keyed on field names, and the schema's actual names were never added to the table. Every existing test passed, because each checked a field somebody had remembered to write a case for - an unfalsifiable design for a privacy control. So beyond adding the names, classification now falls back to the *value* when the name is unknown: anything shaped like an IPv4/IPv6 address or a MAC is treated as one. Hostnames deliberately are not inferred by shape, since train.udp_updown is indistinguishable from a domain and mangling a test type would corrupt the document to protect nothing. LeakTest is the guard, and is written to fail for fields nobody thought of: it plants identifying values wherever one can occur and asserts none survive. It also pins that RFC1918 addresses stay readable, so it cannot pass by over-redacting. Route prefixes and :: needed care - 0.0.0.0/0 must stay itself or a routing table becomes unreadable for no privacy gain. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Claude Fable 5
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@@ -848,3 +848,48 @@ itself to table rows, so the prose can keep explaining which codes were retired
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Six tests: uniqueness, declared-vs-listed, prefix↔category agreement, naming convention, a
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word-order-anagram check (the shape the duplication actually took), and the document agreement.
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### A real privacy leak, found by starting on the machine-readable schema (2026-08-01)
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The intent was `measurement.schema.json` (§8's promised companion). The first step — checking
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whether the anonymizer actually covers the fields the schema declares as sensitive — found that it
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did not, so that became the work.
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**At the `balanced` level, five identifying values were being uploaded verbatim:**
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| value | field | why it matters |
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|---|---|---|
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| `2001:…::150` | `networks[].link.addresses[].addr` | the device's own global IPv6 address — a strong, geolocatable device identifier |
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| `2a02:…::1` | `networks[].link.routes[].gateway` | identifies the ISP allocation |
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| `203.0.113.77` | `networks[].link.dns.servers[]` | the configured resolver |
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| `nas.example.lan` | `private_dns_hostname` | an internal hostname |
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| `example.lan` | `search_domains[]` | the internal domain |
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The settings screen describes that level as pseudonymizing addresses. It was not.
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**Root cause:** classification keyed on field *names*, and the schema's actual names (`addr`,
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`gateway`, `dst`, `servers`, `search_domains`, `private_dns_hostname`) had never been added to the
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table. Not a subtle bug — just an unfalsifiable design. The existing tests all passed, because each
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one checked a field somebody had remembered to write a case for.
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**Two fixes, one of them structural:**
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1. The missing names were added.
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2. More importantly, a **shape-based backstop**: when a field name is unrecognised, the *value* is
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inspected, and anything shaped like an IPv4/IPv6 address or a MAC is treated as one. A name
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table can only protect fields someone thought of, which is precisely the wrong property for a
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privacy control. Hostnames are deliberately *not* inferred by shape — `train.udp_updown` is
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indistinguishable from a domain, and mangling a test type would corrupt the document to protect
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nothing.
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`LeakTest` is the new guard and is written to fail for fields nobody has considered: it plants
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identifying values wherever one can actually occur and asserts none survive, rather than checking
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a list of known cases. It also pins that RFC1918 addresses still come through readable, so the
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test cannot pass by over-redacting everything.
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Route prefixes and the unspecified address needed care in the transform: `0.0.0.0/0` and `::/0`
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must stay themselves, or a routing table becomes unreadable for no privacy gain.
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**Still outstanding:** `measurement.schema.json` itself. Worth noting what this episode implies for
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it — much of a document's payload lives in `evidence`/`metrics`/`params`, which are per-test-type
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`JsonObject` by design and therefore *outside* any schema. A schema-driven anonymizer would have
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less coverage there than the name-plus-shape one now does, so the schema should be built for
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validation and external tooling, not as a replacement for the classifier.
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