An Empirical Study on Android-related Vulnerabilities

Mobile devices are used more and more in everyday life. They are our cameras, wallets, and keys. Basically, they embed most of our private information in our pocket. For this and other reasons, mobile devices, and in particular the software that runs on them, are considered first-class citizens in the software-vulnerabilities landscape. Several studies investigated the software-vulnerabilities phenomenon in the context of mobile apps and, more in general, mobile devices. Most of these studies focused on vulnerabilities that could affect mobile apps, while just few investigated vulnerabilities affecting the underlying platform on which mobile apps run: the Operating System (OS). Also, these studies have been run on a very limited set of vulnerabilities. In this paper we present the largest study at date investigating Android-related vulnerabilities, with a specific focus on the ones affecting the Android OS. In particular, we (i) define a detailed taxonomy of the types of Android-related vulnerability; (ii) investigate the layers and subsystems from the Android OS affected by vulnerabilities; and (iii) study the survivability of vulnerabilities (i.e., the number of days between the vulnerability introduction and its fixing). Our findings could help OS and apps developers in focusing their verification & validation activities, and researchers in building vulnerability detection tools tailored for the mobile world

Map Editor for OS Android

Import 22/07/2015Cílem této práce je vytvoření funkční knihovny pro rozpoznávání ručně kreslených map. Implementace je realizována v jazyce Java pro OS Android i desktopovou edici Java SE. Součástí práce je shrnutí metod pro rozpoznávání obrazu, testování vzniklé knihovny a ukázková aplikace.The target of this thesis is to create library for handcrafted map recognition. Implementation for OS Android, as well as desktop edition, is realized in Java programming language. Thesis includes a summary of image recognition methods, test cases for final library and sample application.460 - Katedra informatikyvýborn

How Smart is your Android Smartphone?

Smart phones are ubiquitous today. These phones generally have access to sensitive personal information and, consequently, they are a prime target for attackers. A virus or worm that spreads over the network to cell phone users could be particularly damaging. Due to a rising demand for secure mobile phones, manufacturers have increased their emphasis on mobile security. In this project, we address some security issues relevant to the current Android smartphone framework. Specifically, we demonstrate an exploit that targets the Android telephony service. In addition, as a defense against the loss of personal information, we provide a means to encrypt data stored on the external media card. While smartphones remain vulnerable to a variety of security threats, this encryption provides an additional level of security

Device-Centric Monitoring for Mobile Device Management

The ubiquity of computing devices has led to an increased need to ensure not only that the applications deployed on them are correct with respect to their specifications, but also that the devices are used in an appropriate manner, especially in situations where the device is provided by a party other than the actual user. Much work which has been done on runtime verification for mobile devices and operating systems is mostly application-centric, resulting in global, device-centric properties (e.g. the user may not send more than 100 messages per day across all applications) being difficult or impossible to verify. In this paper we present a device-centric approach to runtime verify the device behaviour against a device policy with the different applications acting as independent components contributing to the overall behaviour of the device. We also present an implementation for Android devices, and evaluate it on a number of device-centric policies, reporting the empirical results obtained.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2016, arXiv:1603.0837