Implementation of Content-Based Anonymization Edge Router on NetFPGA

In recent years, a large number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices have appeared. Accordingly, various services using data from such devices have been proposed. However, the collected raw data include private information, and thus, privacy problems arise. Data anonymization is a method for removing privacy-sensitive information from raw data. Data anonymization for IoT data services should satisfy the following requirements. First, the raw data should be anonymized between a device and the cloud server. Second, the anonymization methods and the destinations of the collected data should be flexibly configured, as they depend on data types and agreements with data suppliers. Third, network transparency is necessary for ease of installation. However, conventional data anonymization systems do not satisfy these requirements. We propose anonymization hardware that functions as a network router on network edges. It directly anonymizes data in network packets. Moreover, it decides the destination IP address of the packets and anonymizes data based on their content. For high-throughput and low-power processing of the packets, the proposed hardware was implemented by using a field-programmable gate array. The throughput of the proposed hardware achieved 10 Gbps wire speed, and the power consumption was lower than that of software implementation.