71 research outputs found
Analyzing Android Browser Apps for file:// Vulnerabilities
Securing browsers in mobile devices is very challenging, because these
browser apps usually provide browsing services to other apps in the same
device. A malicious app installed in a device can potentially obtain sensitive
information through a browser app. In this paper, we identify four types of
attacks in Android, collectively known as FileCross, that exploits the
vulnerable file:// to obtain users' private files, such as cookies, bookmarks,
and browsing histories. We design an automated system to dynamically test 115
browser apps collected from Google Play and find that 64 of them are vulnerable
to the attacks. Among them are the popular Firefox, Baidu and Maxthon browsers,
and the more application-specific ones, including UC Browser HD for tablet
users, Wikipedia Browser, and Kids Safe Browser. A detailed analysis of these
browsers further shows that 26 browsers (23%) expose their browsing interfaces
unintentionally. In response to our reports, the developers concerned promptly
patched their browsers by forbidding file:// access to private file zones,
disabling JavaScript execution in file:// URLs, or even blocking external
file:// URLs. We employ the same system to validate the ten patches received
from the developers and find one still failing to block the vulnerability.Comment: The paper has been accepted by ISC'14 as a regular paper (see
https://daoyuan14.github.io/). This is a Technical Report version for
referenc
Towards understanding Android system vulnerabilities: Techniques and insights
National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapor
On the Feasibility of Specialized Ability Stealing for Large Language Code Models
Recent progress in large language code models (LLCMs) has led to a dramatic
surge in the use of software development. Nevertheless, it is widely known that
training a well-performed LLCM requires a plethora of workforce for collecting
the data and high quality annotation. Additionally, the training dataset may be
proprietary (or partially open source to the public), and the training process
is often conducted on a large-scale cluster of GPUs with high costs. Inspired
by the recent success of imitation attacks in stealing computer vision and
natural language models, this work launches the first imitation attack on
LLCMs: by querying a target LLCM with carefully-designed queries and collecting
the outputs, the adversary can train an imitation model that manifests close
behavior with the target LLCM. We systematically investigate the effectiveness
of launching imitation attacks under different query schemes and different LLCM
tasks. We also design novel methods to polish the LLCM outputs, resulting in an
effective imitation training process. We summarize our findings and provide
lessons harvested in this study that can help better depict the attack surface
of LLCMs. Our research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on
imitation attacks and defenses in deep neural models, particularly in the
domain of code related tasks.Comment: 11 page
VRPTEST: Evaluating Visual Referring Prompting in Large Multimodal Models
With recent advancements in Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) across various
domains, a novel prompting method called visual referring prompting has
emerged, showing significant potential in enhancing human-computer interaction
within multimodal systems. This method offers a more natural and flexible
approach to human interaction with these systems compared to traditional text
descriptions or coordinates. However, the categorization of visual referring
prompting remains undefined, and its impact on the performance of LMMs has yet
to be formally examined. In this study, we conduct the first comprehensive
analysis of LMMs using a variety of visual referring prompting strategies. We
introduce a benchmark dataset called VRPTEST, comprising 3 different visual
tasks and 2,275 images, spanning diverse combinations of prompt strategies.
Using VRPTEST, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of eight versions of
prominent open-source and proprietary foundation models, including two early
versions of GPT-4V. We develop an automated assessment framework based on
software metamorphic testing techniques to evaluate the accuracy of LMMs
without the need for human intervention or manual labeling. We find that the
current proprietary models generally outperform the open-source ones, showing
an average accuracy improvement of 22.70%; however, there is still potential
for improvement. Moreover, our quantitative analysis shows that the choice of
prompt strategy significantly affects the accuracy of LMMs, with variations
ranging from -17.5% to +7.3%. Further case studies indicate that an appropriate
visual referring prompting strategy can improve LMMs' understanding of context
and location information, while an unsuitable one might lead to answer
rejection. We also provide insights on minimizing the negative impact of visual
referring prompting on LMMs.Comment: 13 page
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