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We present the results of the first large-scale study into Android markets that offer modified or modded apps: apps whose features and functionality have been altered by a third-party. We analyse over 146k (thousand) apps obtained from 13…
The apps installed on a smartphone can reveal much information about a user, such as their medical conditions, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. Additionally, the presence or absence of particular apps on a smartphone can inform an…
Millions of mobile apps have been available through various app markets. Although most app markets have enforced a number of automated or even manual mechanisms to vet each app before it is released to the market, thousands of low-quality…
Fraudulent behaviors in Google Android app market fuel search rank abuse and malware proliferation. We present FairPlay, a novel system that uncovers both malware and search rank fraud apps, by picking out trails that fraudsters leave…
The ubiquity of smartphones, and their very broad capabilities and usage, make the security of these devices tremendously important. Unfortunately, despite all progress in security and privacy mechanisms, vulnerabilities continue to…
Increasing interest in securing the Android ecosystem has spawned numerous efforts to assist app developers in building secure apps. These efforts have resulted in tools and techniques capable of detecting vulnerabilities (and malicious…
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…
Human values such as honesty, social responsibility, fairness, privacy, and the like are things considered important by individuals and society. Software systems, including mobile software applications (apps), may ignore or violate such…
As a key supplement to privacy policies that are known to be lengthy and difficult to read, Apple has launched the app privacy labels, which purportedly help users more easily understand an app's privacy practices. However, false and…
Tools focused on cryptographic API misuse often detect the most basic expressions of the vulnerable use, and are unable to detect non-trivial variants. The question of whether tools should be designed to detect such variants can only be…
Mobile applications, particularly those from social media platforms such as WeChat and TikTok, are evolving into "super apps" that offer a wide range of services such as instant messaging and media sharing, e-commerce, e-learning, and…
With the proliferation of smart phone, a major growth in the use of apps related to the health category, specifically those concerned with foot health can be observed. Although new, these apps are being used practically for scanning feet…
User reviews published in mobile app repositories are essential for understanding user satisfaction and engagement within a specific market segment. Manual analysis of reviews is impractical due to the large data volume, and automated…
The rise of mobile apps has brought greater convenience and customization for users. However, many apps use analytics services to collect a wide range of user interaction data purportedly to improve their service, while presenting app users…
This paper describes a real world deployment of a context-aware mobile app recommender system (RS) called Frappe. Utilizing a hybrid-approach, we conducted a large-scale app market deployment with 1000 Android users combined with a…
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…
During last ten years, the number of smartphones and mobile applications has been constantly growing. Android, iOS and Windows Mobile are three mobile platforms that cover almost all smartphones in the world in 2017. Developing a mobile app…
Mobile phones enable the collection of a wealth of private information, from unique identifiers (e.g., email addresses), to a user's location, to their text messages. This information can be harvested by apps and sent to third parties,…
[Background] Research on requirements engineering (RE) for mobile apps employs datasets formed by app users, developers or vendors. However, little is known about the sources of these datasets in terms of platforms and the RE activities…
This paper reports a large-scale study that aims to understand how mobile application (app) vulnerabilities are associated with software libraries. We analyze both free and paid apps. Studying paid apps was quite meaningful because it…