Obfuscator

Obfuscator is a simple tool that replaces JSON data with random values but preserves the data structure, types, and relations.

This tool becomes handy if you have a problem with a dataset that you can't share because it contains sensitive information. Obfuscator replaces all values in this dataset with random values (not with hash values), but it will keep the structure and JSON types intact.

For example, you have the following employees.json file:

[
  {
    "id": 193,
    "department_id": 10,
    "name": "Joe Sixpack",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "phone": "+1-234-567-890",
    "city": "New York",
    "socialSecurityNumber": "555-55-5555",
    "active": true,
    "salary": 10000
  },
  {
    "id": 220,
    "department_id": 12,
    "name": "Jane Plain",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "city": "New York",
    "phone": "+2-345-678-901",
    "socialSecurityNumber": "777-77-7777",
    "active": false,
    "salary": 150000
  }
]

And departments.json file in the same directory:

[
  {
    "id": 10,
    "name": "HR"
  },
  {
    "id": 12,
    "name": "Sales"
  }
]

If you haven't installed Obfuscator yet, run this command:

npm install -g data-obfuscator

And then, just cd to your directory with the JSON files run obfuscate. Obfuscator will create a file per every JSON file in the directory. So, for our example, it will make employees.obfuscated.json:

[
  {
    "id": 961,
    "department_id": 87,
    "name": "J5A CIWZLao",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "phone": "+7-514-949-061",
    "city": "X9A zUS4",
    "socialSecurityNumber": "972-82-8282",
    "active": true,
    "salary": 58635
  },
  {
    "id": 571,
    "department_id": 5,
    "name": "RIz1 X9ve0",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "city": "X9A zUS4",
    "phone": "+5-330-447-822",
    "socialSecurityNumber": "137-42-7934",
    "active": false,
    "salary": 243046
  }
]

departments.obfuscated.json:

[
  {
    "id": 87,
    "name": "OL"
  },
  {
    "id": 5,
    "name": "JmzX0"
  }
]

And clues.json:

[
  {
    "before": 10,
    "_after": 87
  },
  {
    "before": "HR",
    "_after": "OL"
  },
  {
    "before": 12,
    "_after": 5
  },
  {
    "before": "Sales",
    "_after": "JmzX0"
  },
  {
    "before": 193,
    "_after": 961
  },
  {
    "before": "Joe Sixpack",
    "_after": "J5A CIWZLao"
  },
  {
    "before": "[email protected]",
    "_after": "[email protected]"
  },
  {
    "before": "+1-234-567-890",
    "_after": "+7-514-949-061"
  },
  {
    "before": "New York",
    "_after": "X9A zUS4"
  },
  {
    "before": "555-55-5555",
    "_after": "972-82-8282"
  },
  {
    "before": 10000,
    "_after": 58635
  },
  {
    "before": 220,
    "_after": 571
  },
  {
    "before": "Jane Plain",
    "_after": "RIz1 X9ve0"
  },
  {
    "before": "[email protected]",
    "_after": "[email protected]"
  },
  {
    "before": "+2-345-678-901",
    "_after": "+5-330-447-822"
  },
  {
    "before": "777-77-7777",
    "_after": "137-42-7934"
  },
  {
    "before": 150000,
    "_after": 243046
  }
]

The clues.json links the original values and the newly generated random values. So you can now share the two obfuscated files with your colleague and keep clues.json if you need to map the randomly generated values back to the original ones.

However, you still need to be careful with the data: the default implementation of Obfuscator preserves string lengths, spaces, dots, "at signs" (@), and a couple more symbols to keep emails, GUIDs, and text look more natural. It also doesn't change null and boolean values.