English
Related papers

Related papers: Security Smells Pervade Mobile App Servers

200 papers

An increasing number of mental health services are offered through mobile systems, a paradigm called mHealth. Although there is an unprecedented growth in the adoption of mHealth systems, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-11-09 Leonardo Horn Iwaya , M. Ali Babar , Awais Rashid , Chamila Wijayarathna

Nowadays, modern applications are developed using components written in different programming languages. These systems introduce several advantages. However, as the number of languages increases, so does the challenges related to the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-01-18 Mouna Abidi , Md Saidur Rahman , Moses Openja , Foutse Khomh

While smishing (SMS Phishing) attacks have risen to become one of the most common types of social engineering attacks, there is a lack of relevant smishing datasets. One of the biggest challenges in the domain of smishing prevention is the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-04-30 Daniel Timko , Muhammad Lutfor Rahman

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.…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-07-01 Michael A. Specter , Mihai Christodorescu , Abbie Farr , Bo Ma , Robin Lassonde , Xiaoyang Xu , Xiang Pan , Fengguo Wei , Saswat Anand , Dave Kleidermacher

As the development of Solidity contracts on Ethereum, more developers are reusing them on other compatible blockchains. However, developers may overlook the differences between the designs of the blockchain system, such as the Gas Mechanism…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-04-14 Zexu Wang , Jiachi Chen , Tao Zhang , Yu Zhang , Weizhe Zhang , Yuming Feng , Zibin Zheng

The rise of mobile apps has brought greater convenience and many options for users. However, many apps use analytics services to collect a wide range of user interaction data, with privacy policies often failing to reveal the types of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Feiyang Tang , Bjarte M. Østvold

The security of Android has been recently challenged by the discovery of a number of vulnerabilities involving different layers of the Android stack. We argue that such vulnerabilities are largely related to the interplay among layers…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2012-09-05 Alessandro Armando , Alessio Merlo , Luca Verderame

Logging plays a central role in ensuring reproducibility, observability, and reliability in machine learning (ML) systems. While logging is generally considered a good engineering practice, poorly designed logging can negatively affect…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-26 Patrick Loic Foalem , Leuson Da Silva , Foutse Khomh , Heng Li , Ettore Merlo

Previous work has investigated the particularities of security practices within specific user communities defined based on country of origin, age, prior tech abuse, and economic status. Their results highlight that current security…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-01-19 Savino Dambra , Leyla Bilge , Platon Kotzias , Yun Shen , Juan Caballero

HTML5-based mobile apps become more and more popular, mostly because they are much easier to be ported across different mobile platforms than native apps. HTML5-based apps are implemented using the standard web technologies, including…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2014-10-29 Xing Jin , Tongbo Luo , Derek G. Tsui , Wenliang Du

In Android, communications between apps and system services are supported by a transaction-based Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanism. Binder, as the cornerstone of this IPC mechanism, separates two communicating parties as client…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2016-04-26 Huan Feng , Kang G. Shin

With over 3 billion users globally, mobile instant messaging apps have become indispensable for both personal and professional communication. Besides plain messaging, many services implement additional features such as delivery and read…

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…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Mark Huasong Meng , Chuan Yan , Qing Zhang , Zeyu Wang , Kailong Wang , Sin Gee Teo , Guangdong Bai , Jin Song Dong

Recent studies have shown that aggregate CPU usage and power consumption traces on smartphones can leak information about applications running on the system or websites visited. In response, access to such data has been blocked for mobile…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-09-10 Nikolay Matyunin , Yujue Wang , Tolga Arul , Kristian Kullmann , Jakub Szefer , Stefan Katzenbeisser

Mobile apps have become essential of our daily lives, making code quality a critical concern for developers. Behavioural code smells are characteristics in the source code that induce inappropriate code behaviour during execution, which…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Houcine Abdelkader Cherief , Florent Avellaneda , Naouel Moha

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…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-03-14 Feiyang Tang , Bjarte M. Østvold

Intense competition in the mobile apps market means it is important to maintain high levels of app reliability to avoid losing users. Yet despite its importance, app reliability is underexplored in the research literature. To address this…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Chathrie Wimalasooriya , Sherlock A. Licorish , Daniel Alencar da Costa , Stephen G. MacDonell

The popularity of machine learning has wildly expanded in recent years. Machine learning techniques have been heatedly studied in academia and applied in the industry to create business value. However, there is a lack of guidelines for code…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-03-31 Haiyin Zhang , Luís Cruz , Arie van Deursen

Relying on ubiquitous Internet connectivity, applications on mobile devices frequently perform web requests during their execution. They fetch data for users to interact with, invoke remote functionalities, or send user-generated content or…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2017-05-22 Marianna Rapoport , Philippe Suter , Erik Wittern , Ondřej Lhoták , Julian Dolby

Most contemporary mobile devices offer hardware-backed storage for cryptographic keys, user data, and other sensitive credentials. Such hardware protects credentials from extraction by an adversary who has compromised the main operating…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-07-11 Jenny Blessing , Ross J. Anderson , Alastair R. Beresford