Knock-Knock: The unbearable lightness of Android Notifications

Android Notifications can be considered as essential parts in Human-Smartphone interaction and inextricable modules of modern mobile applications that can facilitate User Interaction and improve User Experience. This paper presents how this well-crafted and thoroughly documented mechanism, provided by the OS can be exploited by an adversary. More precisely, we present attacks that result either in forging smartphone application notifications to lure the user in disclosing sensitive information, or manipulate Android Notifications to launch a Denial of Service attack to the users' device, locally and remotely, rendering them unusable. This paper concludes by proposing generic countermeasures for the discussed security threats.Comment: Presented at International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP 2018

M-health: supporting automated diagnosis and electonic health records

BACKGROUND: Mobile technology has become a part of our everyday life. Mobile services are used in a wide variety of scientific areas including healthcare. As an intersection of computer supported technology and medicine, m-health is expected to bring higher quality in healthcare. A remedy to deter people from neglecting their health issues is providing further and targeted information, while this information is available on the main devices most people use on a regular basis, namely any station or a mobile phone connected to Internet, enabling access to their health status anytime and at any place. RESULTS: The authors present a framework that is built based on mobile health and which, in addition, incorporates a module that is responsible for making diagnoses. To achieve this, we have applied the Analytical Hierarchical Process algorithm (AHP) on the test results, making the system able to infer the presence or not of an illness in the subject. Data to be processed emerge from the corresponding subjects’ electronic health records. Through the resulting system, doctors and health companies, which are involved in medical sciences, are offered a sophisticated, powerful tool that provides supplementary diagnoses about their clients by employing their laboratory medical tests. CONCLUSIONS: In this paper a novel computer supported framework is presented, which is targeted basically in the scientific area of mobile health. The incorporated medical diagnosis module and the online presentation of medical tests results may not only facilitate doctors’ and medical agencies work and support healthcare in general, but also and most importantly can benefit users by having an analytical picture of their health status at any place and time. Perhaps one of the most challenging targets for this system to reach is to draw individuals’ attention and give them motives to be more concerned about their health

Comulang: towards a collaborative e-learning system that supports student group modeling

This paper describes an e-learning system that is expected to further enhance the educational process in computer-based tutoring systems by incorporating collaboration between students and work in groups. The resulting system is called “Comulang” while as a test bed for its effectiveness a multiple language learning system is used. Collaboration is supported by a user modeling module that is responsible for the initial creation of student clusters, where, as a next step, working groups of students are created. A machine learning clustering algorithm works towards group formatting, so that co-operations between students from different clusters are attained. One of the resulting system’s basic aims is to provide efficient student groups whose limitations and capabilities are well balanced

Cashing out crypto: state of practice in ransom payments

The fast pace of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies’ evolution makes people vulnerable to financial fraud and provides a relatively straightforward monetisation mechanism for cybercriminals, in particular ransomware groups which exploit crypto’s pseudo-anonymity properties. At the same time, regulatory efforts for addressing crimes related to crypto assets are emerging worldwide. In this work, we shed light on the current state of practice of ransomware monetisation to provide evidence of their payment traceability, explore future trends, and—above all—showcase that over-regulating cryptocurrencies is not the best way to mitigate their risks. For that purpose, first, we provide an overview of the legislative initiatives currently taken by the USA, the EU, and the OECD to regulate cryptocurrencies, showing that strict laws and the divergences between the regulatory regimes can hardly efficiently regulate the global phenomenon of cryptocurrency, which transcends borders and states. Next, we focus on illicit payments in bitcoin to ransomware groups, illustrating how these payments are siphoned off and how criminals cash out the ransom, often leaving traceable evidence behind. To this end, we leverage a publicly available dataset and a set of state-of-the-art blockchain analysis tools to identify payment patterns, trends, and transaction trails, which are provided in an anonymised form. Our work reveals that a significant amount of illicit bitcoin transactions can be easily traced, and consequently, many cyber crimes like ransomware can actually be tracked down and investigated with existing tools and laws, thus providing fertile ground for better and fairer legislation on crypto

Emotional intelligence in object oriented multimodal user interfaces for mobile learning and e-learning

Το πεδίο της κινητής τεχνολογίας λογισμικού αποτελεί σημαντικό ερευνητικό στόχο της διατριβής, με βασική επικέντρωση στην παροχή εκπαιδευτικού λογισμικού και συγγραφικών εργαλείων για εκπαιδευτές. Το προκύπτον σύστημα «Mobile Tutor» ενσωματώνει μηχανισμούς συλλογιστικής σε σχέση με τους χρήστες, όπως η μοντελοποίηση των χρηστών, καθώς και τεχνικές προσαρμοστικότητας (adaptivity) στον χρήστη και στο περιβάλλον λειτουργίας της εκάστοτε κινητής συσκευής. Η ενσωμάτωση των ευφυών αυτών μηχανισμών στην κινητή τεχνολογία λογισμικού αποτελεί σημαντική καινοτομία και συνεισφορά αυτής της διατριβής. Η προσαρμοστικότητα του συστήματος στο περιβάλλον της εκάστοτε διεπαφής είναι ιδιαίτερης σημασίας, αφού επιτρέπει την προσαρμογή της παρουσίασης της μεταδιδόμενης πληροφορίας ανάλογα με τη κινητή συσκευή του κάθε χρήστη. Κύρια ενότητα της διατριβής αποτελεί το πεδίο της συναισθηματικής αλληλεπίδρασης ανθρώπου-υπολογιστή, με απώτερο στόχο την εν δυνάμει ενσωμάτωση του πεδίου αυτού στην κινητή τεχνολογία λογισμικού. Η συναισθηματική αλληλεπίδραση ανθρώπου-υπολογιστή περιλαμβάνει την αναγνώριση των συναισθημάτων των χρηστών από τους υπολογιστές, καθώς και την παραγωγή συναισθηματικών καταστάσεων από την πλευρά του υπολογιστή, μέσω βοηθών-πρακτόρων. Τόσο η παραγωγή, όσο και η αναγνώριση συναισθηματικών καταστάσεων μελετήθηκε στο πλαίσιο της παρούσας διατριβής, ενώ ενισχύθηκε και η πεποίθηση και η σημασία της αλληλοσύνδεσης και αλληλεξάρτησής τους