Related papers: Security Apps under the Looking Glass: An Empirica…
Due to the amount of data that smartphone applications can potentially access, platforms enforce permission systems that allow users to regulate how applications access protected resources. If users are asked to make security decisions too…
Third-party libraries (TPLs) have become a significant part of the Android ecosystem. Developers can employ various TPLs to facilitate their app development. Unfortunately, the popularity of TPLs also brings new security issues. For…
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…
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.…
Many Android applications collect data from users. When they do, they must protect this collected data according to the current legal frameworks. Such data protection has become even more important since the European Union rolled out the…
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…
Online programming discussion platforms such as Stack Overflow serve as a rich source of information for software developers. Available information include vibrant discussions and oftentimes ready-to-use code snippets. Anecdotes report that…
Security of mobile apps affects the security of their users. This has fueled the development of techniques to automatically detect vulnerabilities in mobile apps and help developers secure their apps; specifically, in the context of Android…
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…
China is currently the country with the largest number of Android smartphone users. We use a combination of static and dynamic code analysis techniques to study the data transmitted by the preinstalled system apps on Android smartphones…
Nowadays, privacy has become a very serious issue with smart and mobile platforms. Users tend to allow intrusive apps access much sensible information without really knowing the potential threats. To solve this issue several solutions (e.g.…
Web communication has become an indispensable characteristic of mobile apps. However, it is not clear what data the apps transmit, to whom, and what consequences such transmissions have. We analyzed the web communications found in mobile…
The transparency and privacy behavior of mobile browsers has remained widely unexplored by the research community. In fact, as opposed to regular Android apps, mobile browsers may present contradicting privacy behaviors. On the one end,…
Android allows apps to communicate with its system services via system service helpers so that these apps can use various functions provided by the system services. Meanwhile, the system services rely on their service helpers to enforce…
Mobile systems offer portable and interactive computing, empowering users, to exploit a multitude of context-sensitive services, including mobile healthcare. Mobile health applications (i.e., mHealth apps) are revolutionizing the healthcare…
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…
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,…
Current legal frameworks enforce that Android developers accurately report the data their apps collect. However, large codebases can make this reporting challenging. This paper employs an empirical approach to understand developers'…
The goal of this paper is to analyze the behavior and intent of recent types of privacy invasive Android adware. There are two recent trends in this area: more financial motives instead of ego motives, and the development of more dynamic…
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…