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The proliferation of Android devices brings the fragmentation problem. Selecting and prioritizing major device models are critical for mobile app developers to select testbeds and optimize various issues such as quality-assurance, release…
Android apps can hold secret strings of themselves such as cloud service credentials or encryption keys. Leakage of such secret strings can induce unprecedented consequences like monetary losses or leakage of user private information. In…
The login functionality, being the gateway to app usage, plays a critical role in both user experience and application security. As Android apps increasingly incorporate login functionalities, they support a variety of authentication…
The rise of mobile apps has brought greater convenience and many options for users. However, many apps use analytics services to collect a wide range of user interaction data, with privacy policies often failing to reveal the types of…
Android introduces a new permission model that allows apps to request permissions at runtime rather than at the installation time since 6.0 (Marshmallow, API level 23). While this runtime permission model provides users with greater…
Android apps are built on APIs that abstract core Android system functionalities. These APIs are officially documented in multiple files distributed with the Android source code or SDK, which we collectively refer to as Android API Lists…
Advertisement drives the economy of the mobile app ecosystem. As a key component in the mobile ad business model, mobile ad content has been overlooked by the research community, which poses a number of threats, e.g., propagating malware…
Resource leak bugs in Android apps are pervasive and can cause serious performance degradation and system crashes. In recent years, several resource leak detection techniques have been proposed to assist Android developers in correctly…
Third-party Software Development Kits (SDKs) are widely adopted in Android app development, to effortlessly accelerate development pipelines and enhance app functionality. However, this convenience raises substantial concerns about…
Mobile messaging apps are a fundamental communication infrastructure, used by billions of people every day to share information, including sensitive data. Security and Privacy are thus critical concerns for such applications. Although the…
The misunderstanding and incorrect configurations of cryptographic primitives have exposed severe security vulnerabilities to attackers. Due to the pervasiveness and diversity of cryptographic misuses, a comprehensive and accurate…
Android's open-source nature facilitates widespread smartphone accessibility, particularly in price-sensitive markets. System and vendor applications that come pre-installed on budget Android devices frequently operate with elevated…
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'…
Teens are using mobile devices for an increasing number of activities. Smartphones and a variety of mobile apps for communication, entertainment, and productivity have become an integral part of their lives. This mobile phone use has…
In this paper we present the first population-level, city-scale analysis of application usage on smartphones. Using deep packet inspection at the network operator level, we obtained a geo-tagged dataset with more than 6 million unique…
Privacy, security, and accessibility, like ethical concerns in mobile applications (a.k.a. apps), commonly subsumed under non-functional requirements, are generally reported by users through app reviews available in app stores. However,…
Energy efficiency is an important criterion to judge the quality of mobile apps, but one third of our randomly sampled apps suffer from energy issues that can quickly drain battery power. To understand these issues, we conducted an…
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…
Due to the convenience of access-on-demand to information and business solutions, mobile apps have become an important asset in the digital world. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, app developers have joined the response effort in…
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…