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Mobile devices have access to personal, potentially sensitive data, and there is a large number of mobile applications and third-party libraries that transmit this information over the network to remote servers (including app developer…
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…
Nowadays many people store photos in smartphones. Many of the photos contain sensitive, private information, such as a photocopy of driver's license and credit card. An arising privacy concern is with the unauthorized accesses to such…
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,…
Due to Android's open source feature and low barriers to entry for developers, millions of developers and third-party organizations have been attracted into the Android ecosystem. However, over 90 percent of mobile malware are found…
The open-source nature of the Android OS makes it possible for manufacturers to ship custom versions of the OS along with a set of pre-installed apps, often for product differentiation. Some device vendors have recently come under scrutiny…
[Background] Web communication is universal in cyberspace, and security risks in this domain are devastating. [Aims] We analyzed the prevalence of six security smells in mobile app servers, and we investigated the consequence of these…
The Google Play marketplace has introduced the Data Safety section to improve transparency regarding how mobile applications (apps) collect, share, and protect user data. This mechanism requires developers to disclose privacy and…
Mobile mini-programs in WeChat have gained significant popularity since their debut in 2017, reaching a scale similar to that of Android apps in the Play Store. Like Google, Tencent, the provider of WeChat, offers APIs to support the…
Existing research typically treats privacy policies as flat, uniform text, extracting information without regard for the document's logical hierarchy. Disregard for structural cues of section headings designed to guide the reader, often…
A growing concern with advertisement libraries on Android is their ability to exfiltrate personal information from their host applications. While previous work has looked at the libraries' abilities to measure private information on their…
This article provides a quantitative analysis of privacy-compromising mechanisms on 1 million popular websites. Findings indicate that nearly 9 in 10 websites leak user data to parties of which the user is likely unaware; more than 6 in 10…
Nowadays the app-in-app paradigm is becoming increasingly popular, and sub-apps have become an important form of mobile applications. WeChat, the leading app-in-app platform, provides millions of sub-apps that can be used for online…
The Android ecosystem faces a notable challenge known as fragmentation, which denotes the extensive diversity within the system. This issue is mainly related to differences in system versions, device hardware specifications, and…
The number of Android smartphone and tablet users has experienced a rapid growth in the past few years and it raises users' awareness on the privacy and security of their mobile devices. The features of openness and extensibility make…
Application markets provide a communication channel between app developers and their end-users in form of app reviews, which allow users to provide feedback about the apps. Although security and privacy in mobile apps are one of the biggest…
Privacy policies are intended to inform users about how software systems collect and handle data, yet they often remain vague or incomplete. This paper presents an empirical study of patterns in log-related statements within privacy…
Increasing interest in securing the Android ecosystem has spawned numerous efforts to assist app developers in building secure apps. These efforts have resulted in tools and techniques capable of detecting vulnerabilities (and malicious…
With the digital breakthrough, smart phones have become very essential component. Mobile devices are very attractive attack surface for cyber thieves as they hold personal details (accounts, locations, contacts, photos) and have potential…
Android and Facebook provide third-party applications with access to users' private data and the ability to perform potentially sensitive operations (e.g., post to a user's wall or place phone calls). As a security measure, these platforms…