Related papers: An Empirical Study of Code Obfuscation Practices i…
This paper reports a large-scale study that aims to understand how mobile application (app) vulnerabilities are associated with software libraries. We analyze both free and paid apps. Studying paid apps was quite meaningful because it…
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,…
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…
Program obfuscation is a widely employed approach for software intellectual property protection. However, general obfuscation methods (e.g., lexical obfuscation, control obfuscation) implemented in mainstream obfuscation tools are heuristic…
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…
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…
Android is designed with a number of built-in security features such as app sandboxing and permission-based access controls. Android supports multiple communication methods for apps to cooperate. This creates a security risk of app…
With the continuous growth in the usage of Android apps, ensuring their security has become critically important. An increasing number of malicious apps adopt anti-analysis techniques to evade security measures. Although some research has…
The increasing frequency of attacks on Android applications coupled with the recent popularity of large language models (LLMs) necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the capabilities of the latter in identifying potential…
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…
Android-based smart devices are exponentially growing, and due to the ubiquity of the Internet, these devices are globally connected to the different devices/networks. Its popularity, attractive features, and mobility make malware creator…
Android devices are equipped with many pre-installed applications which have the capability of tracking and monitoring users. Although applications coming pre-installed pose a great danger to user security and privacy, they have received…
With the number of new mobile malware instances increasing by over 50\% annually since 2012 [24], malware embedding in mobile apps is arguably one of the most serious security issues mobile platforms are exposed to. While obfuscation…
Recent studies have revealed that 87 % to 96 % of the Android apps using cryptographic APIs have a misuse which may cause security vulnerabilities. As previous studies did not conduct a qualitative examination of the validity and severity…
Access to privacy-sensitive information on Android is a growing concern in the mobile community. Albeit Google Play recently introduced some privacy guidelines, it is still an open problem to soundly verify whether apps actually comply with…
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…
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…
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,…
We present the results of the first large-scale study into Android markets that offer modified or modded apps: apps whose features and functionality have been altered by a third-party. We analyse over 146k (thousand) apps obtained from 13…
Mobile phones and tablets have become the most widely used computing devices, with a large predominance of the Android platform. As a natural evolution, the development of Android applications has surged and has become a major field of…