Related papers: FairPlay: Fraud and Malware Detection in Google Pl…
Google Play's policy forbids the use of incentivized installs, ratings, and reviews to manipulate the placement of apps. However, there still exist apps that incentivize installs for other apps on the platform. To understand how…
The pervasiveness of the Android operating system, with the availability of applications almost for everything, is readily accessible in the official Google play store or a dozen alternative third-party markets. Additionally, the vital role…
Android applications are frequently plagiarized or repackaged, and software obfuscation is a recommended protection against these practices. However, there is very little data on the overall rates of app obfuscation, the techniques used, or…
The difficulty of large scale monitoring of app markets affects our understanding of their dynamics. This is particularly true for dimensions such as app update frequency, control and pricing, the impact of developer actions on app…
Despite regulatory efforts to establish reliable content-rating guidelines for mobile apps, the process of assigning content ratings in the Google Play Store remains self-regulated by the app developers. There is no straightforward method…
The Google Play marketplace has introduced the Data Safety section to improve transparency regarding how mobile applications (apps) collect, share, and protect user data. This mechanism requires developers to disclose privacy and…
We investigate the use of Android permissions as the vehicle to allow for quick and effective differentiation between benign and malware apps. To this end, we extract all Android permissions, eliminating those that have zero impact, and…
The impressive growth of smartphone devices in combination with the rising ubiquity of using mobile platforms for sensitive applications such as Internet banking, have triggered a rapid increase in mobile malware. In recent literature, many…
Android-based smart devices are exponentially growing, and due to the ubiquity of the Internet, these devices are globally connected to the different devices/networks. Its popularity, attractive features, and mobility make malware creator…
Fairness is one of the socio-technical concerns that must be addressed in software systems. Considering the popularity of mobile software applications (apps) among a wide range of individuals worldwide, mobile apps with unfair behaviors and…
Thousands of malicious applications targeting mobile devices, including the popular Android platform, are created every day. A large number of those applications are created by a small number of professional under-ground actors, however…
The Android ecosystem is vulnerable to issues such as app repackaging, counterfeiting, and piracy, threatening both developers and users. To mitigate these risks, developers often employ code obfuscation techniques. However, while effective…
There are over 1.2 million applications on the Google Play store today with a large number of competing applications for any given use or function. This creates challenges for users in selecting the right application. Moreover, some of the…
App stores include an increasing amount of user feedback in form of app ratings and reviews. Research and recently also tool vendors have proposed analytics and data mining solutions to leverage this feedback to developers and analysts,…
Access to privacy-sensitive information on Android is a growing concern in the mobile community. Albeit Google Play recently introduced some privacy guidelines, it is still an open problem to soundly verify whether apps actually comply with…
Online app search optimization (ASO) platforms that provide bulk installs and fake reviews for paying app developers in order to fraudulently boost their search rank in app stores, were shown to employ diverse and complex strategies that…
In the digitized world, smartphones and their apps play an important role. To name just a few examples, some apps offer possibilities for entertainment, others for online banking, and others offer support for two-factor authentication.…
Rating platforms enable large-scale collection of user opinion about items (products, other users, etc.). However, many untrustworthy users give fraudulent ratings for excessive monetary gains. In the paper, we present FairJudge, a system…
Numerous tools rely on automatic categorization of Android apps as part of their methodology. However, incorrect categorization can lead to inaccurate outcomes, such as a malware detector wrongly flagging a benign app as malicious. One such…
Android devices are growing exponentially and are connected through the internet accessing billion of online websites. The popularity of these devices encourages malware developer to penetrate the market with malicious apps to annoy and…