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Although there are over 1,600,000 third-party Android apps in the Google Play Store, little has been conclusively shown about how their individual (and collective) permission usage has evolved over time. Recently, Android 6 overhauled the…
Security of Android devices is now paramount, given their wide adoption among consumers. As researchers develop tools for statically or dynamically detecting suspicious apps, malware writers regularly update their attack mechanisms to hide…
Many Android applications collect data from users. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires vendors to faithfully disclose which data their apps collect. This task is complicated because many apps use…
Therapy and life-coaching apps have been rapidly growing in number, flavors, and popularity. However, their users routinely share highly sensitive and personal information, such as traumas, fantasies, desires, relationship difficulties, and…
The scheme of application (app) distribution systems involving incentivized third-party app vendors is a desirable option for the emerging edge computing systems. However, such a scheme also brings various security challenges as faced by…
The Android unrestricted application market, being of open source nature, has made it a popular platform for third-party applications reaching millions of smart devices in the world. This tremendous increase in applications with an…
Parental control applications, software tools designed to manage and monitor children's online activities, serve as essential safeguards for parents in the digital age. However, their usage has sparked concerns about security and privacy…
User tracking is critical in the mobile ecosystem, which relies on device identifiers to build clear user profiles. In earlier ages, Android allowed easy access to non-resettable device identifiers like device serial numbers and IMEI by…
E-commerce mobile applications are central to global financial transactions, making their security and privacy crucial. In this study, we analyze 92 top-grossing Android e-commerce apps (58 U.S.-based and 34 international) using MobSF,…
Third-party tracking allows companies to collect users' behavioural data and track their activity across digital devices. This can put deep insights into users' private lives into the hands of strangers, and often happens without users'…
String obfuscation is an established technique used by proprietary, closed-source applications to protect intellectual property. Furthermore, it is also frequently used to hide spyware or malware in applications. In both cases, the…
Mobile applications (apps) have become deeply personal, constantly demanding access to privacy-sensitive information in exchange for more personalized user experiences. Such privacy-invading practices have generated major multidimensional…
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…
End-users seldom read verbose privacy policies, leading app stores like Google Play to mandate simplified data safety declarations as a user-friendly alternative. However, these self-declared disclosures often contradict the full privacy…
With the requirements and emphases on privacy transparency placed by regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, the Google Play Store requires Android developers to more responsibly communicate their apps' privacy practices to potential users by…
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…
As social networking takes to the mobile world, smartphone apps provide users with ever-changing ways to interact with each other. Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of apps have entered the market offering end-to-end…
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…
Over the past years, literature has shown that attacks exploiting the microarchitecture of modern processors pose a serious threat to the privacy of mobile phone users. This is because applications leave distinct footprints in the…
Computing platforms such as smartphones frequently access Web content using many separate applications rather than a single Web browser application. These applications often deal with sensitive user information such as financial data or…