Related papers: AirGuard -- Protecting Android Users From Stalking…
Apple AirTags use Apple's Find My network: when nearby iDevices detect a lost tag, they anonymously forward an encrypted location report to Apple, which the tag's owner can then fetch to locate the item. That encryption protects privacy --…
Stalkerware is a serious threat to individuals' privacy that is receiving increased attention from the security and privacy research communities. Existing works have largely focused on studying leading stalkerware apps, dual-purpose apps,…
This study presents an in-depth analysis of the security landscape in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tracking systems, with a particular emphasis on Apple AirTags and Samsung SmartTags, including their cryptographic frameworks. Our…
Location tags are designed to track personal belongings. Nevertheless, there has been anecdotal evidence that location tags are also misused to stalk people. Tracking is achieved locally, e.g., via Bluetooth with a paired phone, and…
The recent introduction of Find My app by Apple will open a large window of opportunities for whistleblowers. Based on a short range Bluetooth signals, an EC P-224 encryption, and an end-to-end encrypted manner using iCloud Keychain, Find…
Personal item tracking devices are popular for locating lost items such as keys, wallets, and suitcases. Originally created to help users find personal items quickly, these devices are now being abused by stalkers and domestic abusers to…
Smartphones, the devices we carry everywhere with us, are being heavily tracked and have undoubtedly become a major threat to our privacy. As "tracking the trackers" has become a necessity, various static and dynamic analysis tools have…
Tracking is a highly privacy-invasive data collection practice that has been ubiquitous in mobile apps for many years due to its role in supporting advertising-based revenue models. In response, Apple introduced two significant changes with…
Tag-based tracking ecosystems help users locate lost items, but can be leveraged for unwanted tracking and stalking. Existing protocol-driven defenses and prior academic solutions largely assume stable identifiers or predictable beaconing.…
We conduct the first comprehensive security analysis of Tile, the second most popular crowd-sourced location-tracking service behind Apple's AirTags. We identify several exploitable vulnerabilities and design flaws, disproving many of the…
While extremely valuable to achieve advanced functions, mobile phone sensors can be abused by attackers to implement malicious activities in Android apps, as experimentally demonstrated by many state-of-the-art studies. There is hence a…
Google and Apple have jointly provided an API for exposure notification in order to implement decentralized contract tracing apps using Bluetooth Low Energy, the so-called "Google/Apple Proposal", which we abbreviate by "GAP". We…
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…
Privacy labels -- standardized, compact representations of data collection and data use practices -- are often presented as a solution to the shortcomings of privacy policies. Apple introduced mandatory privacy labels for apps in its App…
Contact tracing has historically been used to retard the spread of infectious diseases, but if it is exercised by hand in large-scale, it is known to be a resource-intensive and quite deficient process. Nowadays, digital contact tracing has…
When users leave their mobile devices unattended, or let others use them momentarily, they are susceptible to privacy breaches. Existing technological defenses, such as unlock authentication or account switching, have proven to be…
Overnight, Apple has turned its hundreds-of-million-device ecosystem into the world's largest crowd-sourced location tracking network called offline finding (OF). OF leverages online finder devices to detect the presence of missing offline…
Automatic service discovery is essential to realizing the full potential of the Internet of Things (IoT). While discovery protocols like Multicast DNS, Apple AirDrop, and Bluetooth Low Energy have gained widespread adoption across both IoT…
Tracking devices, while designed to help users find their belongings in case of loss/theft, bring in new questions about privacy and surveillance of not just their own users, but in the case of crowd-sourced location tracking, even that of…
As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic digital contact tracing has been proposed as a tool to support the health authorities in their quest to determine who has been in close and sustained contact with a person infected by the coronavirus.…