Related papers: Detecting Connectivity Issues in Android Apps
The value of mobile apps is traditionally measured by metrics such as the number of downloads, installations, or user ratings. A problem with these measures is that they reflect actual usage at most indirectly. Indeed, analytic companies…
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,…
The ability to identify the author responsible for a given software object is critical for many research studies and for enhancing software transparency and accountability. However, as opposed to other application markets like iOS,…
Android OS supports multiple communication methods between apps. This opens the possibility to carry out threats in a collaborative fashion, c.f. the Soundcomber example from 2011. In this paper we provide a concise definition of collusion…
Android OS is severely fragmented by API updates and device vendors' OS customization, creating a market condition where vastly different OS versions coexist. This gives rise to compatibility crash problems where Android apps crash on…
The reliability of mobile devices is a challenge for vendors, since the mobile software stack has significantly grown in complexity. In this paper, we study how to assess the impact of faults on the quality of user experience in the Android…
Inter-Component Communication (ICC) is a key mechanism in Android. It enables developers to compose rich functionalities and explore reuse within and across apps. Unfortunately, as reported by a large body of literature, ICC is rather…
Mobile apps provide various critical services, such as banking, communication, and healthcare. To this end, they have access to our personal information and have the ability to perform actions on our behalf. Hence, securing mobile apps is…
This paper presents a measurement study of information leakage and SSL vulnerabilities in popular Android apps. We perform static and dynamic analysis on 100 apps, downloaded at least 10M times, that request full network access. Our…
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…
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 applications (apps) grow dramatically in recent years. Apps are user interface (UI) centric typically. Rapid UI responsiveness is key consideration to app developers. However, we still lack a handy tool for profiling app performance…
As the popularity of mobile smart devices continues to climb the complexity of "apps" continues to increase, making the development and maintenance process challenging. Current bug tracking systems lack key features to effectively support…
Android devices are equipped with many pre-installed applications which have the capability of tracking and monitoring users. Although applications coming pre-installed pose a great danger to user security and privacy, they have received…
The complex nature of intelligent systems motivates work on supporting users during interaction, for example through explanations. However, as of yet, there is little empirical evidence in regard to specific problems users face when…
Many accessibility features available on mobile platforms require applications (apps) to provide complete and accurate metadata describing user interface (UI) components. Unfortunately, many apps do not provide sufficient metadata for…
This study is motivated by two key considerations: the significant benefits mobile applications offer individuals and businesses, and the limited empirical research on usability challenges. To address this gap, we conducted structured…
The competing nature of the app market motivates us to shift our focus on apps that provide similar functionalities and directly compete with each other (i.e., peer apps). In this work, we study the ratings and the review text of 100…
Machine learning-based malware detection dominates current security defense approaches for Android apps. However, due to the evolution of Android platforms and malware, existing such techniques are widely limited by their need for constant…
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…