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[Background] Web communication is universal in cyberspace, and security risks in this domain are devastating. [Aims] We analyzed the prevalence of six security smells in mobile app servers, and we investigated the consequence of these…
In the realm of mobile security, where OS-based protections have proven insufficient against robust attackers, Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) have emerged as a hardware-based security technology. Despite the industry's persistence in…
Networked applications traditionally derive their identity from the identity of the host on which they run. The default application identity acquired from the host results in subtle and substantial problems related to application…
Mobile devices often distribute measurements from physical sensors to multiple applications using software multiplexing. On Android devices, the highest requested sampling frequency is returned to all applications, even if others request…
Latency and cost of Internet-based services are encouraging the use of application-level caching to continue satisfying users' demands, and improve the scalability and availability of origin servers. Despite its popularity, this level of…
The packaging model of Android apps requires the entire code necessary for the execution of an app to be shipped into one single apk file. Thus, an analysis of Android apps often visits code which is not part of the functionality delivered…
With the widespread use and adoption of mobile platforms like Android a new software quality concern has emerged -- energy consumption. However, developing energy-efficient software and applications requires knowledge and likewise proper…
Despite being one of the largest and most popular projects, the official Android framework has only provided test cases for less than 30% of its APIs. Such a poor test case coverage rate has led to many compatibility issues that can cause…
Network library APIs have historically been developed with the emphasis on data movement, placement, and communication semantics. Many communication semantics are available across a large variety of network libraries, such as send-receive,…
Android is the most used Operating System worldwide for mobile devices, with hundreds of thousands of apps downloaded daily. Although these apps are primarily written in Java and Kotlin, advanced functionalities such as graphics or…
Mobile apps are used in a variety of health settings, from apps that help providers, to apps designed for patients, to health and fitness apps designed for the general public. These apps ask the user for, and then collect and leak a wealth…
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…
Third-party security apps are an integral part of the Android app ecosystem. Many users install them as an extra layer of protection for their devices. There are hundreds of such security apps, both free and paid in Google Play Store and…
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…
One of the challenges of analyzing, testing and debugging Android apps is that the potential execution orders of callbacks are missing from the apps' source code. However, bugs, vulnerabilities and refactoring transformations have been…
Using APIs to develop software applications is the norm. APIs help developers to build applications faster as they do not need to reinvent the wheel. It is therefore important for developers to understand the APIs that they plan to use.…
This paper presents a large-scale analysis of fingerprinting-like behavior in the mobile application ecosystem. We take a market-based approach, focusing on third-party tracking as enabled by applications' common use of third-party SDKs.…
Context: Smart TVs have become one of the most popular television types. Many app developers and service providers have designed TV versions for their smartphone applications. Despite the extensive studies on mobile app analysis, its TV…
The Android unrestricted application market, being of open source nature, has made it a popular platform for third-party applications reaching millions of smart devices in the world. This tremendous increase in applications with an…
Many applications are being written in more than one language to take advantage of the features that different languages provide such as native code support, improved performance, and language-specific libraries. However, there are few…