Related papers: How Far are App Secrets from Being Stolen? A Case …
The packaging model of Android apps requires the entire code necessary for the execution of an app to be shipped into one single apk file. Thus, an analysis of Android apps often visits code which is not part of the functionality delivered…
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…
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…
Dating apps for mobile devices, one popular GeoSocial app category, are growing increasingly popular. These apps encourage the sharing of more personal information than conventional social media apps, including continuous location data.…
As technology and technology companies have grown in power, ubiquity, and societal influence, some companies -- and notably some mobile apps -- have come to be perceived as privacy threats. Prior work has considered how various factors…
While there have been various studies towards Android apps and their development, there is limited discussion of the broader class of apps that fall in the fake area. Fake apps and their development are distinct from official apps and…
Context: Post-release user feedback plays an integral role in improving software quality and informing new features. Given its growing importance, feedback concerning security enhancements is particularly noteworthy. In considering the…
On-device machine learning (ML) is quickly gaining popularity among mobile apps. It allows offline model inference while preserving user privacy. However, ML models, considered as core intellectual properties of model owners, are now stored…
Never before has any OS been so popular as Android. Existing mobile phones are not simply devices for making phone calls and receiving SMS messages, but powerful communication and entertainment platforms for web surfing, social networking,…
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…
Android applications may leak privacy data carelessly or maliciously. In this work we perform inter-component data-flow analysis to detect privacy leaks between components of Android applications. Unlike all current approaches, our tool,…
We present an analysis of 12 million instances of privacy-relevant reviews publicly visible on the Google Play Store that span a 10 year period. By leveraging state of the art NLP techniques, we examine what users have been writing about…
Cryptography has been extensively used in Android applications to guarantee secure communications, conceal critical data from reverse engineering, or ensure mobile users' privacy. Various system-based and third-party libraries for Android…
As mobile app usage continues to rise, so does the generation of extensive user interaction data, which includes actions such as swiping, zooming, or the time spent on a screen. Apps often collect a large amount of this data and claim to…
The apps installed on a smartphone can reveal much information about a user, such as their medical conditions, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. Additionally, the presence or absence of particular apps on a smartphone can inform an…
Mobile databases are the statutory backbones of many applications on smartphones, and they store a lot of sensitive information. However, vulnerabilities in the operating system or the app logic can lead to sensitive data leakage by giving…
Most contemporary mobile devices offer hardware-backed storage for cryptographic keys, user data, and other sensitive credentials. Such hardware protects credentials from extraction by an adversary who has compromised the main operating…
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…
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…
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…