Practical attacks on security and privacy through a low-cost Android device

As adoption of smartphones and tablets increases, and budget device offerings become increasingly affordable, the vision of bringing universal connectivity to the developing world is becoming more and more viable. Nonetheless, it is important to consider the diverse use-cases for smartphones and tablets today, particularly where a user may only have access to a single connected device. In many regions, banking and other important services can be accessed from mobile connected devices, expanding the reach of these services. This paper highlights the practical risks of one such lowcost computing device, highlighting the ease with which a very recent (manufacturered September 2015) Android-based internet tablet, designed for the developing world, can be completely compromised by an attacker. The weaknesses identified allow an attacker to gain full root access and persistent malicious code execution capabilities. We consider the implications of these attacks, and the ease with which these attacks may be carried out, and highlight the difficulty in effectively mitigating these weaknesses as a user, even on a recently manufactured device

MusA: Using Indoor Positioning and Navigation to Enhance Cultural Experiences in a museum

In recent years there has been a growing interest into the use of multimedia mobile guides in museum environments. Mobile devices have the capabilities to detect the user context and to provide pieces of information suitable to help visitors discovering and following the logical and emotional connections that develop during the visit. In this scenario, location based services (LBS) currently represent an asset, and the choice of the technology to determine users' position, combined with the definition of methods that can effectively convey information, become key issues in the design process. In this work, we present MusA (Museum Assistant), a general framework for the development of multimedia interactive guides for mobile devices. Its main feature is a vision-based indoor positioning system that allows the provision of several LBS, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits according to visitors' personal interest and curiosity. Starting from the thorough description of the system architecture, the article presents the implementation of two mobile guides, developed to respectively address adults and children, and discusses the evaluation of the user experience and the visitors' appreciation of these application

Developing wireless ECG device using Bluetooth protocol for interfacing with Android based applications

The current project involves the development of a wireless ECG recorder and an android application that can be integrated smoothly for use by health-conscious people or cardiac patients and clinicians as well for self-monitoring and feedback respectively. Briefly, the hardware as well as software for a wireless ECG device were designed and developed that was integrated with Android based application to display and records the user's ECG signal. The hardware incorporated microcontroller, MSP-430 that detected the cardiac signal and performed analog to digital conversion (ADC), digital filtering, QRS complex extraction and heart rate calculation using specific algorithms. During validation, the prototype successfully recorded the cardiac electric signals originated by subject’s heart with distinct QRS complex and T peaks. However, a distinct P wave was lacking. Further, the signal was rectified and the background noise was amplified followed by amplifying the signal to a tractable level. Next, the signal was communicated to an android device using Bluetooth protocol by HC-05 Bluetooth module. The signal was successfully displayed graphically, and the data was stored after being digitalized for future referencing and processing using advanced algorithms. The developed prototype is a robust, accurate and low-cost ECG recorder with wireless signal transmission to android device. The hardware incorporates distinct filter and amplification system to eliminate artifact from active movement. The use of adaptive filter is proposed for possible future improvement, with the main goal being to build the amplification and filter system which communicates with an Android smartphone application

A complex situation in data recovery

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The research considers an unusual situation in data recovery. Data recovery is the process of recovering data from recording media that is not accessible by normal means. Providing that the data has not been overwritten or the recording medium physically damaged, this is usually a relatively simple process of either repairing the file system so that the file(s) may be accessed as usual or finding the data on the medium and copying it directly from the medium into normal file(s). The data in this recovery situation is recorded by specialist call centre recording equipment and is stored on the recording medium in a proprietary format whereby simultaneous conversations are multiplexed together and can only be accessed by using associated metadata records. The value of the recorded data may be very high especially in the financial sector where it may be considered a legal audit of business transactions. When a failure occurs and data needs to be recovered, both the data and metadata information must be recreated before a single call can be replayed. A key component to accessing this information is the location metadata that identifies the location of the required components on the medium. If the metadata is corrupted, incomplete or wrong then a repair cannot proceed until it is corrected. This research focuses on the problem of verifying this location metadata. Initially it was believed that only a small set of errors would exist and work centred on detecting these errors by presenting the information to engineers in an at-a-glance image. When the extent of the possible errors was realised, an attempt was made to deduce location metadata by exploring the content of the recorded medium. Although successful in one instance, the process was not able to distinguish between current and previous uses. Eventually insights gained from exploration of the recording application's source code, permitted an intelligent trial and error process which deduced the underlying medium apportioning formula. It was then possible to incorporate this formula into the heuristics, generating the at-a-glance image, to create an artefact that could verify the location metadata for any given repair. After discovering the formula, the research returned to the media exploration and the produced disk fingerprinting technique. The disk fingerprinting technique gave valuable insights into error states in call centre recording and provided a new way of seeing the contents of a hard drive. This research provided the following contributions: 1. It has provided a means by which the recording systems' location metadata can be verified and repaired. 2. As a result of this verification, greater automation of the recovery process is now possible before the need for human verification is required. 3. The disk fingerprinting process. This has already given insights into the recording system's problems and is able to provide a new way of seeing the contents of recording media

Novel Technique for Comprehensive Noise Identification and Cancellation in GSM Signal

Presence of noise significantly degrades the contents being transmitted over GSM channel. With the evolution of next generation of communication system, the challenges in noise cancellation in voice along with data transmission are not being addressed effectively by existing filters. Therefore, the proposed system offers a mechanism where emphasis is laid on identification of superior and inferior forms of GSM transient signal followed by cancellation of its noise level. Designed using analytical methodology, the proposed system harness the potential of probability theory to perform a modeling that associates allocated power of the transmitting device with the level of noise. The outcome of the study is found to offer a comprehensive identification of different forms of noise and can precisely determine the level of superior and inferior quality of signal. The outcome significantly assists in designing an accurate filter for noise cancellation in GSM signal