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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'…
Android apps rely on application programming interfaces (APIs) to access various functionalities of Android devices. These APIs however are regularly updated to incorporate new features while the old APIs get deprecated. Even though the…
Android has been the most popular smartphone system with multiple platform versions active in the market. To manage the application's compatibility with one or more platform versions, Android allows apps to declare the supported platform…
Mobile applications, often simply called "apps", are increasingly widespread, and we use them daily to perform a number of activities. Like all software, apps must be adequately tested to gain confidence that they behave correctly.…
Expecting the shipment of 1 billion Android devices in 2017, cyber criminals have naturally extended their vicious activities towards Google's mobile operating system. With an estimated number of 700 new Android applications released every…
Android apps require permissions when accessing resources related to privacy or system integrity. Starting from Android 6, these permissions have to be asked at runtime. However, migrating to the new permission model poses multiple…
With the widespread use and adoption of mobile platforms like Android a new software quality concern has emerged -- energy consumption. However, developing energy-efficient software and applications requires knowledge and likewise proper…
As mobile applications (apps) become ubiquitous in everyday life, it is crucial for developers to prioritize accessibility for users with diverse abilities. While previous research has identified widespread accessibility issues and raised…
Autonomous agents have become increasingly important for interacting with the real world. Android agents, in particular, have been recently a frequently-mentioned interaction method. However, existing studies for training and evaluating…
In the realm of mobile security, where OS-based protections have proven insufficient against robust attackers, Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) have emerged as a hardware-based security technology. Despite the industry's persistence in…
With the emergence of deep learning techniques, smartphone apps are now embedded on-device AI features for enabling advanced tasks like speech translation, to attract users and increase market competitiveness. A good interaction design is…
Android operating system (OS) is often updated, where each new version may involve API deprecation. Usages of deprecated APIs in Android apps need to be updated to ensure the apps' compatibility with the old and new versions of Android OS.…
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…
Large language models (LLMs) for code are increasingly used in software development, but they remain static after pretraining while APIs and software libraries continue to evolve. Model editing offers a lightweight alternative to retraining…
The increasing frequency of attacks on Android applications coupled with the recent popularity of large language models (LLMs) necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the capabilities of the latter in identifying potential…
There are over 1.2 million applications on the Google Play store today with a large number of competing applications for any given use or function. This creates challenges for users in selecting the right application. Moreover, some of the…
Despite over 3.5 million Android apps and 200+ million Android Auto-compatible vehicles, only a few hundred apps support Android Auto due to platform-specific compliance requirements. Android Auto mandates service-based architectures in…
Android, the #1 mobile app framework, enforces the single-GUI-thread model, in which a single UI thread manages GUI rendering and event dispatching. Due to this model, it is vital to avoid blocking the UI thread for responsiveness. One…
The Android middleware, in particular the so-called systemserver, is a crucial and central component to Android's security and robustness. To understand whether the systemserver provides the demanded security properties, it has to be…
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…