import { copycat } from '@snaplet/copycat'

copycat.email('foo')
// => '[email protected]'

copycat.email('bar')
// => '[email protected]'

copycat.email('foo')
// => '[email protected]'

Motivation

The problem

Many of the use cases we aim to solve with snaplet involves anonymizing sensitive information. In practice, this involves replacing each bit of sensitive data with something else that resembles the original value, yet does not allow the original value to be inferred.

To do this, we initially turned to faker for replacing the sensitive data with fake data. This approach took us quite far. However, we struggled with getting the replacement data to be deterministic: we found we did not have enough control over how results are generated to be able to easily ensure that for each value of the original data we wanted to replace, we'd always get the same replacement value out.

Faker allows one to seed a psuedo-random number generator (PRNG), such that the same sequence of values will be generated every time. While this means the sequence is deterministic, the problem was we did not have enough control over where the next value in the sequence was going to be used. Changes to the contents or structure in the original data we're replacing and changes to how we are using faker both had an effect on the way we used this sequence, which in turn had an effect on the resulting replacement value for any particular value in the original data. In other words, we had determinism, but not in a way that is useful for our purpose.

The solution

What we were really needing was not the same sequence of generated values every time, but the same mapping to generated values every time.

This is exactly what we designed Copycat to do. For each method provided by Copycat, a given input value will always map to the same output value.

import { copycat } from '@snaplet/copycat'

copycat.email('foo')
// => '[email protected]'

copycat.email('bar')
// => '[email protected]'

copycat.email('foo')
// => '[email protected]'

Copycat works statelessly: for the same input, the same value will be returned regardless of the environment, process, call ordering, or any other external factors.

Under the hood, Copycat hashes the input values (in part relying on md5), with the intention of making it computationally infeasible for the input values to be inferred from the output values.

Alternative approaches

It is still technically possible to make use of faker or similar libraries that offer deterministic PRNG - with some modification. That said, these solutions came with practical limitations that we decided made them less viable for us:

• It is possible to simply seed the PRNG for every identifier, and then use it to generate only a single value. This seems to be a misuse of these libraries though: there is an up-front cost to seeding these PRNGs that can be expensive if done for each and every value to be generated. Here are benchmarks that point to this up-front cost.
• You can generate a sequence of N values, hash identifiers to some integer smaller than N, then simply use that as an index to lookup a value in the sequence. This can even be done lazily. Still, you're now limiting the uniqueness of the values to N. The larger N is, the larger the cost of keeping these sequences in memory, or the more computationally expensive it is if you do not hold onto the sequences in memory. The smaller N is, the less unique your generated values are.

Note though that for either of these approaches, hashing might also still be needed to make it infeasible for the inputs to be inferred from the outputs.

API Reference

Overview

All Copycat functions take in an input value as their first parameter:

import { copycat } from '@snaplet/copycat'

copycat.email('foo')
// => '[email protected]'

The given input can be any JSON-serializable value. For any two calls to the same function, the input given in each call serializes down to the same value and the same output will be returned.

Note that unlike JSON.stringify(), object property ordering is not considered.

Working with PII (Personal Identifiable Information)

If you're using sensitive information as input to Copycat, the fact that Copycat makes use of md5 means it is difficult for the original input value to be inferred from the output value - it is computationally infeasible.

// It is difficult to reverse engineer 'Some sensitive input'
// from 'Rhianna Ebert'
copycat.fullName('Some sensitive input')
// => 'Rhianna Ebert'

That said, there is still something we need to watch out for: with enough guessing, the input values can still be figured out from the output values.

Lets say we replaced all the first names in some table of data. Included in this data was the name 'Susan', which was replaced with 'Therese':

copycat.firstName('Susan') // -> 'Therese'

While the attacker is able to see the name Therese, it is difficult for them to look at Copycat's code, and figure out 'Susan' from 'Therese'. But the attacker knows they're dealing with first names, and they have access to the Copycat library. What they can do, is input a list of first names into Copycat, until they find a matching name.

Let's say they input the name 'John'. The result is 'April', which does not match 'Therese', so they move on. They next try 'Sarah', which maps to 'Florencio' - again no match, they move on. They next try Susan, which maps to the name they see - Therese. This means they have a match, and now know that the original name was Susan:

copycat.firstName('John') // -> 'April', no match
copycat.firstName('Sarah') // -> 'Florencio', no match
copycat.firstName('Susan') // -> 'Therese', match!

To mitigate this, Copycat supports salt with setSalt - additional data concatenated onto the input value before hashing:

copycat.fullName('foo')
// => 'Zakary Hessel'

copycat.setSalt('something-else')

copycat.fullName('foo')
// => 'Damion Brown'

The idea is that while Copycat's code is publicly known, the salt isn't publically known. This means that even though attackers have access to Copycat's code, they are not able to figure out which inputs map to which outputs, since they do not have access to the salt.

Ideally, one salt should be used per-value, rather than re-used for several values. If salt is re-used, an attacker can pre-compute a table of results. In our example, a salt value can be chosen and used along with a list of names to pre-compute the corresponding output values.

faker

A re-export of faker from @faker-js/faker. We do not alter faker in any way, and do not seed it.

copycat.scramble(string[, options])

Takes in a string value, and returns a string with the same length, but with each character replaced with a different character in the same character range:

• By default, spaces are preserved (see preserve option below)
• Lower case ASCII characters are replaced with lower case ASCII letters
• Upper case ASCII characters are replaced with upper case ASCII letters
• Digits are replaced with digits
• Any other ASCII character in the code point range 32 to 126 (0x20 - 0x7e) is replaced with either an alphanumeric character, or _, -, or +
• Any other character is replaced with a Latin-1 character in the range of (0x20 - 0x7e, or 0xa0 - 0xff)

copycat.scramble('Zakary Hessel')
// => 'Wradls Kbicbs'

options

• preserve: An array of characters that should remain the same if present in the given input string

copycat.scramble('[email protected]', { preserve: ['@', '.'] })
// => '[email protected]'

copycat.oneOf(input, values)

Takes in an input value and an array of values, and returns an item in values that corresponds to that input:

copycat.oneOf('foo', ['red', 'green', 'blue'])
// => 'red'

copycat.int(input[, options])

Takes in an input value and returns an integer.

copycat.int('foo')
// => 2196697842

options

• min=0 and max=Infinity: the minimum and maximum possible values for returned numbers

copycat.bool(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a boolean.

copycat.bool('foo')
// => false

copycat.float(input[, options])

Takes in an input value and returns a number value with both a whole and decimal segment.

copycat.float('foo')
// => 2566716916.329745

copycat.char(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string with a single character.

copycat.char('foo')
// => 'M'

The generated character will be an alphanumeric: lower and upper case ASCII letters and digits 0 to 9.

copycat.digit(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string with a single digit value.

copycat.digit('foo')
// => '2'

copycat.hex(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string with a single hex value.

copycat.hex('foo')
// => '2'

options

• min=0 and max=Infinity: the minimum and maximum possible values for returned numbers

copycat.dateString(input[, options])

Takes in an input value and returns a string representing a date in ISO 8601 format.

dateString('foo')
// => '1982-07-11T18:47:39.000Z'

options

• minYear=1980 and maxYear=2019: the minimum and maximum possible year values for returned dates

copycat.uuid(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value resembling a uuid.

copycat.uuid('foo')
// => '540b95dd-98a2-56fe-9c95-6e7123c148ca'

copycat.email(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value resembling an email address.

copycat.email('foo')
// => '[email protected]'

copycat.firstName(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value resembling a first name.

copycat.firstName('foo')
// => 'Alejandrin'

copycat.lastName(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value resembling a last name.

copycat.lastName('foo')
// => 'Keeling'

copycat.fullName(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value resembling a full name.

copycat.fullName('foo')
// => 'Zakary Hessel'

copycat.phoneNumber(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value resembling a phone number.

copycat.phoneNumber('foo')
// => '+3387100418630'

note The strings resemble phone numbers, but will not always be valid. For example, the country dialing code may not exist, or for a particular country, the number of digits may be incorrect. Please let us know if you need valid phone numbers, and feel free to contribute :)

copycat.username(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value resembling a username.

copycat.username('foo')
// => 'Zakary.Block356'

copycat.password(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling a password.

password('foo')
// => 'uRkXX&u7^uvjX'

Note: not recommended for use as a personal password generator.

copycat.city(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value representing a city.

copycat.city('foo')
// => 'Garland'

copycat.country(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value representing a country.

copycat.country('foo')
// => 'Bosnia and Herzegovina'

copycat.streetName(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value representing a fictitious street name.

copycat.streetName('foo')
// => 'Courtney Orchard'

copycat.streetAddress(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value representing a fictitious street address.

copycat.streetAddress('foo')
// => '757 Evie Vista'

copycat.postalAddress(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value representing a fictitious postal address.

copycat.postalAddress('foo')
// => '178 Adaline Forge, Moreno Valley 8538, Haiti'

copycat.countryCode(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value representing a country code.

copycat.countryCode('foo')
// => 'BV'

copycat.timezone(input)

Takes in an input and returns a string value representing a time zone.

copycat.timezone('foo')
// => 'Asia/Tbilisi'

copycat.word(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling a fictitious word.

copycat.word('foo')
// => 'Kinkami'

options

• capitalize=true: whether or not the word should start with an upper case letter
• minSyllables=2 and maxSyllables=4: the minimum and maximum possible number of syllables that returned words will contain

word('id-2', {
  minSyllables: 1,
  maxSyllables: 6,
  unicode: 0.382
})
// =>
'Rayuashira'

copycat.words(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling fictitious words.

copycat.words('foo')
// => 'Niko vichinashi'

options

• min=2 and max=3: the minimum and maximum possible number of words that returned strings will contain.
• capitalize='first': whether or not the words should start with upper case letters. If true or 'all' is given, each string returned will start with an upper case letter in each word. If 'first' is given, for each string returned, only the first word will start with an upper case letter. If false is given, each string returned will always contain only lower case letters.
• minSyllables=1 and maxSyllables=4: the minimum and maximum possible number of syllables that returned words will contain

copycat.sentence(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling a sentence of fictitious words.

copycat.sentence('foo')
// => 'Kiraevavi somani kihy viyoshi nihahyke kimeraeni.'

options

• minClauses=1 and maxClauses=2: the minimum and maximum possible number of clauses that a returned sentence will contain.
• minWords=5 and maxWords=8: the minimum and maximum possible number of words that each clause will contain.
• minSyllables=1 and maxSyllables=4: the minimum and maximum possible number of syllables that returned words will contain

copycat.paragraph(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling a paragraph of fictitious words.

copycat.paragraph('foo')
// => 'Vakochiko ke rako kimuvachi hayuso mi vako kaichina, mishi mukaimo hakin va racea. Raechime miko kaimo keki shi navi makin yomehyha, na hya nano kin yokimo rae ra. Ke chi kakinaki kakorae machi. Raeva ka kaiko muvani ka racea kaichiyuchi muvinota, sokaiyu komechino shiso yuha raeraceaki kin chitavi. Kokaiashi chirako rae muyo vachi mukani nakoyuta kinmochikai, muhamuva hy mayushita ke shimo takinka notavi kinvayo.'

options

• minSentences=3 and minSentences=7: the minimum and maximum possible number of sentences that a returned paragraph will contain.
• minClauses=1 and maxClauses=2: the minimum and maximum possible number of clauses that each sentence will contain.
• minWords=5 and maxWords=8: the minimum and maximum possible number of words that each clause will contain.
• minSyllables=1 and maxSyllables=4: the minimum and maximum possible number of syllables that returned words will contain

copycat.ipv4(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling an IPv4 address.

copycat.ipv4('foo')
// => '166.164.23.159'

copycat.mac(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling a MAC address.

copycat.mac('foo')
// => 'e1:2c:54:74:b7:80'

copycat.userAgent(input)

Takes in an input value and returns a string value resembling a browser User Agent string.

copycat.userAgent('foo')
// => 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 5.3; Trident/3.1; .NET CLR 1.2.39149.4)'

note For simplicity, this is currently working off of a list of 500 pre-defined user agent strings. If this is too limiting for your needs and you need something more dynamic than this, please let us know, and feel free to contribute :)

copycat.times(input, range, fn)

Takes in an input value and a function fn, calls that function repeatedly (each time with a unique input) for a number of times within the given range, and returns the results as an array:

copycat.times('foo', [4, 5], copycat.word)
// => [ 'Raeko', 'Vame', 'Kiyumo', 'Koviva', 'Kiyovami' ]

As shown above, range can be a tuple array of the minimum and maximum possible number of times the maker should be called. It can also be given as a number, in which case fn will be called exactly that number of times:

copycat.times('foo', 2, copycat.word)
// => [ 'Raeko', 'Vame' ]
### `copycat.setSalt(string)`

<a name="set-salt"></a>Uses the given `string` value as salt when Copycat hashes input values. Helpful for changing the generated results.

```js
copycat.fullName('foo')
// => 'Zakary Hessel'

copycat.setSalt('something-else')

copycat.fullName('foo')
// => 'Damion Brown'