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Related papers: The Android Update Problem: An Empirical Study

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Like many desktop operating systems in the 1990s, Android is now in the process of including support for multi-user scenarios. Because these scenarios introduce new threats to the system, we should have an understanding of how well the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2014-10-29 Paul Ratazzi , Yousra Aafer , Amit Ahlawat , Hao Hao , Yifei Wang , Wenliang Du

Mobile devices encroach on almost every part of our lives, including work and leisure, and contain a wealth of personal and sensitive information. It is, therefore, imperative that these devices uphold high security standards. A key aspect…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Sadegh Farhang , Mehmet Bahadir Kirdan , Aron Laszka , Jens Grossklags

Software testing is an important phase in the software development life-cycle because it helps in identifying bugs in a software system before it is shipped into the hand of its end users. There are numerous studies on how developers test…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-02-15 Luis Cruz , Rui Abreu , David Lo

Android introduces a new permission model that allows apps to request permissions at runtime rather than at the installation time since 6.0 (Marshmallow, API level 23). While this runtime permission model provides users with greater…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Ying Wang , Yibo Wang , Sinan Wang , Yepang Liu , Chang Xu , Shing-Chi Cheung , Hai Yu , Zhiliang Zhu

Android Permission Model and Application (app) analysis has consistently remained the focus of the investigation of research groups and stakeholders of the Android ecosystem since it was launched in 2008. Even though the Android smartphone…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-01-05 Rajendra Kumar Solanki , Vijay Laxmi , Manoj Singh Gaur

Android fragmentation refers to the overwhelming diversity of Android devices and OS versions. These lead to the impossibility of testing an app on every supported device, leaving a number of compatibility bugs scattered in the community…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Xiaoyu Sun , Xiao Chen , Yonghui Liu , John Grundy , Li Li

Contemporary mobile applications (apps) are designed to track, use, and share users' data, often without their consent, which results in potential privacy and transparency issues. To investigate whether mobile apps have always been…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-07-29 Saad Sajid Hashmi , Nazar Waheed , Gioacchino Tangari , Muhammad Ikram , Stephen Smith

Due to the continuous improvement of performance and functions, Android remains the most popular operating system on mobile phone today. However, various malicious applications bring great threats to the system. Over the past few years,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-09-03 Ruicong Huang

Android has been the most popular smartphone system, with multiple platform versions (e.g., KITKAT and Lollipop) active in the market. To manage the application's compatibility with one or more platform versions, Android allows apps to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2017-03-20 Daoyuan Wu , Ximing Liu , Jiayun Xu , David Lo , Debin Gao

The Android permission system is a set of controls to regulate access to sensitive data and platform resources (e.g., camera). The fast evolving nature of Android permissions, coupled with inadequate documentation, results in numerous…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-11-02 Sahrima Jannat Oishwee , Natalia Stakhanova , Zadia Codabux

Android apps are built on APIs that abstract core Android system functionalities. These APIs are officially documented in multiple files distributed with the Android source code or SDK, which we collectively refer to as Android API Lists…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Sinan Wang , Qi Zhang , Jiacheng Li , Lili Wei , Yida Tao , Yepang Liu

Application Programming Interface (API) incompatibility is a long-standing issue in Android application development. The rapid evolution of Android APIs results in a significant number of API additions, removals, and changes between…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-06-27 Shidong Pan , Tianchen Guo , Lihong Zhang , Pei Liu , Zhenchang Xing , Xiaoyu Sun

Despite extensive security research on various Android components, such as kernel or runtime, little attention has been paid to the proprietary vendor blobs within Android firmware. In this paper, we conduct a large-scale empirical study to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Elliott Wen , Jiaxing Shen , Burkhard Wuensche

Android is the most widely deployed end-user focused operating system. With its growing set of use cases encompassing communication, navigation, media consumption, entertainment, finance, health, and access to sensors, actuators, cameras,…

Context: Post-release user feedback plays an integral role in improving software quality and informing new features. Given its growing importance, feedback concerning security enhancements is particularly noteworthy. In considering the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Sherlock A. Licorish , Stephen G. MacDonell , Tony Clear

Building Android applications reliably remains a persistent challenge due to complex dependencies, diverse configurations, and the rapid evolution of the Android ecosystem. This study conducts an empirical analysis of 200 open-source…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Lakshmi Priya Bodepudi , Yutong Zhao , Ming Quan Fu , Yuanyuan Wu , Sen He , Yu Zhao

Mobile applications are being used every day by more than half of the world's population to perform a great variety of tasks. With the increasingly widespread usage of these applications, the need arises for efficient techniques to test…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2017-09-05 Ariel Rosenfeld , Odaya Kardashov , Orel Zang

With over 500,000 commits and more than 700 contributors, the Android platform is undoubtedly one of the largest industrial-scale software projects. This project provides the Android API, and developers heavily rely on this API to develop…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-06-01 Pei Liu , Li Li , Yichun Yan , Mattia Fazzini , John Grundy

Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world, running on more than 70% of mobile devices. This implies a gigantic and very competitive market for Android apps. Being successful in such a market is far from trivial and…

Privacy concerns have long been expressed around smart devices, and the concerns around Android apps have been studied by many past works. Over the past 10 years, we have crawled and scraped data for almost 1.9 million apps, and also stored…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-12-30 Alexander Yu , Yuvraj Agarwal , Jason I. Hong