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Android's open-source nature facilitates widespread smartphone accessibility, particularly in price-sensitive markets. System and vendor applications that come pre-installed on budget Android devices frequently operate with elevated…
Cryptojacking applications pose a serious threat to mobile devices. Due to the extensive computations, they deplete the battery fast and can even damage the device. In this work we make a step towards combating this threat. We collected and…
Android is the most popular operating system with billions of active devices. Unfortunately, its popularity and openness makes it attractive for unwanted apps, i.e., malware and potentially unwanted programs (PUP). In Android, app…
Many mobile apps' business model is based on sharing user data with ad networks to deliver personalized ads. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives California residents a right to opt out. In two experiments we evaluate to which…
Third-party Software Development Kits (SDKs) are widely adopted in Android app development, to effortlessly accelerate development pipelines and enhance app functionality. However, this convenience raises substantial concerns about…
A growing concern with advertisement libraries on Android is their ability to exfiltrate personal information from their host applications. While previous work has looked at the libraries' abilities to measure private information on their…
Therapy and life-coaching apps have been rapidly growing in number, flavors, and popularity. However, their users routinely share highly sensitive and personal information, such as traumas, fantasies, desires, relationship difficulties, and…
Mobile apps provide new opportunities to people with disabilities to act independently in the world. Motivated by this trend, researchers have conducted empirical studies by using the inaccessibility issue rate of each page (i.e., screen…
Numerous studies demonstrated that browser fingerprinting is detrimental to users' security and privacy. However, little is known about the effects of browser fingerprinting on Android hybrid apps -- where a stripped-down Chromium browser…
Advertisements generate huge chunks of revenues for websites and online businesses. Ad-blocker and tracker blocking programs have gained momentum in the last few years with massive debates raging on privacy concerns and improving user…
The study we carried out enabled us to extract some conclusions, which are contrasted with the results obtained. First, in the field of mobile applications, permissions and tracers are almost always present. Android, as far as PlayStore…
While many studies have looked at privacy properties of the Android and Google Play app ecosystem, comparatively much less is known about iOS and the Apple App Store, the most widely used ecosystem in the US. At the same time, there is…
Android and Facebook provide third-party applications with access to users' private data and the ability to perform potentially sensitive operations (e.g., post to a user's wall or place phone calls). As a security measure, these platforms…
Although mobile ad frauds have been widespread, state-of-the-art approaches in the literature have mainly focused on detecting the so-called static placement frauds, where only a single UI state is involved and can be identified based on…
While extremely valuable to achieve advanced functions, mobile phone sensors can be abused by attackers to implement malicious activities in Android apps, as experimentally demonstrated by many state-of-the-art studies. There is hence a…
With the rapid growth of mobile apps, users' concerns about their privacy have become increasingly prominent. Android app logs serve as crucial computer resources, aiding developers in debugging and monitoring the status of Android apps,…
Despite over 3.5 million Android apps and 200+ million Android Auto-compatible vehicles, only a few hundred apps support Android Auto due to platform-specific compliance requirements. Android Auto mandates service-based architectures in…
Android applications collecting data from users must protect it according to the current legal frameworks. Such data protection has become even more important since the European Union rolled out the General Data Protection Regulation…
Android is designed with a number of built-in security features such as app sandboxing and permission-based access controls. Android supports multiple communication methods for apps to cooperate. This creates a security risk of app…
The open-source nature of the Android OS makes it possible for manufacturers to ship custom versions of the OS along with a set of pre-installed apps, often for product differentiation. Some device vendors have recently come under scrutiny…