Related papers: Beyond App Markets: Demystifying Underground Mobil…
The Android ecosystem is vulnerable to issues such as app repackaging, counterfeiting, and piracy, threatening both developers and users. To mitigate these risks, developers often employ code obfuscation techniques. However, while effective…
While mobile app evolution has been widely studied, geographical variation in app behavior remains largely unexplored. This paper presents a large-scale study of location-based Android app differentiation, uncovering two important and…
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…
In recent years, mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) have met an increasing commercial success and have become a fundamental element of the everyday life for billions of people all around the world. Mobile devices are used not…
Underground forums play a crucial role in the criminal ecosystem, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and the trade of illegal tools and services. By analyzing the skills, motivations, focus, and operations of cyber-criminals active in…
Information technology and software services are pervasive, occupying the centre of most aspects of contemporary societies. This has given rise to commonly expected norms and expectations around how such systems should work, appropriate…
Toxic and antisocial user behavior on social media platforms has received considerable scholarly attention due to its detrimental effects on society. This study takes a holistic perspective on the phenomenon of online toxicity by…
Cybercrime is continuously growing in numbers and becoming more sophisticated. Currently, there are various monetisation and money laundering methods, creating a huge, underground economy worldwide. A clear indicator of these activities is…
The industry for children's apps is thriving at the cost of children's privacy: these apps routinely disclose children's data to multiple data trackers and ad networks. As children spend increasing time online, such exposure accumulates to…
With the overall momentum of the blockchain industry, crypto-based crimes are becoming more and more prevalent. After committing a crime, the main goal of cybercriminals is to obfuscate the source of the illicit funds in order to convert…
Third-party services form an integral part of the mobile ecosystem: they allow app developers to add features such as performance analytics and social network integration, and to monetize their apps by enabling user tracking and targeted ad…
Mobile application markets facilitate the distribution of applications and thus help developers advertise their work and customers find useful applications. In addition, the operators of mobile application markets can control the quality…
The difficulty of large scale monitoring of app markets affects our understanding of their dynamics. This is particularly true for dimensions such as app update frequency, control and pricing, the impact of developer actions on app…
Privacy technologies have become extremely prevalent in recent years from secure communication channels to the Tor network. These technologies were designed to provide privacy and security for users, but these ideals have also led to…
Cryptocurrencies are poised to revolutionize the modern economy by democratizing commerce. These currencies operate on top of blockchain-based distributed ledgers. Existing permissionless blockchain-based protocols offer unparalleled…
User reviews published in mobile app repositories are essential for understanding user satisfaction and engagement within a specific market segment. Manual analysis of reviews is impractical due to the large data volume, and automated…
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…
Ransomware has become one of the most widespread threats, primarily due to its easy deployment and the accessibility to services that enable attackers to raise and obfuscate funds. This latter aspect has been significantly enhanced with the…
Illicit crypto-mining leverages resources stolen from victims to mine cryptocurrencies on behalf of criminals. While recent works have analyzed one side of this threat, i.e.: web-browser cryptojacking, only commercial reports have partially…
As Internet streaming of live content has gained on traditional cable TV viewership, we have also seen significant growth of free live streaming services which illegally provide free access to copyrighted content over the Internet. Some of…