Matching Items (5)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Smartphones
- All Subjects: Software Security
- Creators: Doupe, Adam
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
Android is currently the most widely used mobile operating system. The permission model in Android governs the resource access privileges of applications. The permission model however is amenable to various attacks, including re-delegation attacks, background snooping attacks and disclosure of private information. This thesis is aimed at understanding, analyzing and performing forensics on application behavior. This research sheds light on several security aspects, including the use of inter-process communications (IPC) to perform permission re-delegation attacks.
Android permission system is more of app-driven rather than user controlled, which means it is the applications that specify their permission requirement and the only thing which the user can do is choose not to install a particular application based on the requirements. Given the all or nothing choice, users succumb to pressures and needs to accept permissions requested. This thesis proposes a couple of ways for providing the users finer grained control of application privileges. The same methods can be used to evade the Permission Re-delegation attack.
This thesis also proposes and implements a novel methodology in Android that can be used to control the access privileges of an Android application, taking into consideration the context of the running application. This application-context based permission usage is further used to analyze a set of sample applications. We found the evidence of applications spoofing or divulging user sensitive information such as location information, contact information, phone id and numbers, in the background. Such activities can be used to track users for a variety of privacy-intrusive purposes. We have developed implementations that minimize several forms of privacy leaks that are routinely done by stock applications.
Android permission system is more of app-driven rather than user controlled, which means it is the applications that specify their permission requirement and the only thing which the user can do is choose not to install a particular application based on the requirements. Given the all or nothing choice, users succumb to pressures and needs to accept permissions requested. This thesis proposes a couple of ways for providing the users finer grained control of application privileges. The same methods can be used to evade the Permission Re-delegation attack.
This thesis also proposes and implements a novel methodology in Android that can be used to control the access privileges of an Android application, taking into consideration the context of the running application. This application-context based permission usage is further used to analyze a set of sample applications. We found the evidence of applications spoofing or divulging user sensitive information such as location information, contact information, phone id and numbers, in the background. Such activities can be used to track users for a variety of privacy-intrusive purposes. We have developed implementations that minimize several forms of privacy leaks that are routinely done by stock applications.
ContributorsGollapudi, Narasimha Aditya (Author) / Dasgupta, Partha (Thesis advisor) / Xue, Guoliang (Committee member) / Doupe, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Compartmentalizing access to content, be it websites accessed in a browser or documents and applications accessed outside the browser, is an established method for protecting information integrity [12, 19, 21, 60]. Compartmentalization solutions change the user experience, introduce performance overhead and provide varying degrees of security. Striking a balance between usability and security is not an easy task. If the usability aspects are neglected or sacrificed in favor of more security, the resulting solution would have a hard time being adopted by end-users. The usability is affected by factors including (1) the generality of the solution in supporting various applications, (2) the type of changes required, (3) the performance overhead introduced by the solution, and (4) how much the user experience is preserved. The security is affected by factors including (1) the attack surface of the compartmentalization mechanism, and (2) the security decisions offloaded to the user. This dissertation evaluates existing solutions based on the above factors and presents two novel compartmentalization solutions that are arguably more practical than their existing counterparts.
The first solution, called FlexICon, is an attractive alternative in the design space of compartmentalization solutions on the desktop. FlexICon allows for the creation of a large number of containers with small memory footprint and low disk overhead. This is achieved by using lightweight virtualization based on Linux namespaces. FlexICon uses two mechanisms to reduce user mistakes: 1) a trusted file dialog for selecting files for opening and launching it in the appropriate containers, and 2) a secure URL redirection mechanism that detects the user’s intent and opens the URL in the proper container. FlexICon also provides a language to specify the access constraints that should be enforced by various containers.
The second solution called Auto-FBI, deals with web-based attacks by creating multiple instances of the browser and providing mechanisms for switching between the browser instances. The prototype implementation for Firefox and Chrome uses system call interposition to control the browser’s network access. Auto-FBI can be ported to other platforms easily due to simple design and the ubiquity of system call interposition methods on all major desktop platforms.
The first solution, called FlexICon, is an attractive alternative in the design space of compartmentalization solutions on the desktop. FlexICon allows for the creation of a large number of containers with small memory footprint and low disk overhead. This is achieved by using lightweight virtualization based on Linux namespaces. FlexICon uses two mechanisms to reduce user mistakes: 1) a trusted file dialog for selecting files for opening and launching it in the appropriate containers, and 2) a secure URL redirection mechanism that detects the user’s intent and opens the URL in the proper container. FlexICon also provides a language to specify the access constraints that should be enforced by various containers.
The second solution called Auto-FBI, deals with web-based attacks by creating multiple instances of the browser and providing mechanisms for switching between the browser instances. The prototype implementation for Firefox and Chrome uses system call interposition to control the browser’s network access. Auto-FBI can be ported to other platforms easily due to simple design and the ubiquity of system call interposition methods on all major desktop platforms.
ContributorsZohrevandi, Mohsen (Author) / Bazzi, Rida A (Thesis advisor) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Committee member) / Doupe, Adam (Committee member) / Zhao, Ming (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Smartphones are pervasive nowadays. They are supported by mobile platforms that allow users to download and run feature-rich mobile applications (apps). While mobile apps help users conveniently process personal data on mobile devices, they also pose security and privacy threats and put user's data at risk. Even though modern mobile platforms such as Android have integrated security mechanisms to protect users, most mechanisms do not easily adapt to user's security requirements and rapidly evolving threats. They either fail to provide sufficient intelligence for a user to make informed security decisions, or require great sophistication to configure the mechanisms for enforcing security decisions. These limitations lead to a situation where users are disadvantageous against emerging malware on modern mobile platforms. To remedy this situation, I propose automated and systematic approaches to address three security management tasks: monitoring, assessment, and confinement of mobile apps. In particular, monitoring apps helps a user observe and record apps' runtime behaviors as controlled under security mechanisms. Automated assessment distills intelligence from the observed behaviors and the security configurations of security mechanisms. The distilled intelligence further fuels enhanced confinement mechanisms that flexibly and accurately shape apps' behaviors. To demonstrate the feasibility of my approaches, I design and implement a suite of proof-of-concept prototypes that support the three tasks respectively.
ContributorsJing, Yiming (Author) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Thesis advisor) / Doupe, Adam (Committee member) / Huang, Dijiang (Committee member) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Data protection has long been a point of contention and a vastly researched field. With the advent of technology and advances in Internet technologies, securing data has become much more challenging these days. Cloud services have become very popular. Given the ease of access and availability of the systems, it is not easy to not use cloud to store data. This however, pose a significant risk to data security as more of your data is available to a third party. Given the easy transmission and almost infinite storage of data, securing one's sensitive information has become a major challenge.
Cloud service providers may not be trusted completely with your data. It is not very uncommon to snoop over the data for finding interesting patterns to generate ad revenue or divulge your information to a third party, e.g. government and law enforcing agencies. For enterprises who use cloud service, it pose a risk for their intellectual property and business secrets. With more and more employees using cloud for their day to day work, business now face a risk of losing or leaking out information.
In this thesis, I have focused on ways to protect data and information over cloud- a third party not authorized to use your data, all this while still utilizing cloud services for transfer and availability of data. This research proposes an alternative to an on-premise secure infrastructure giving exibility to user for protecting the data and control over it. The project uses cryptography to protect data and create a secure architecture for secret key migration in order to decrypt the data securely for the intended recipient. It utilizes Intel's technology which gives it an added advantage over other existing solutions.
Cloud service providers may not be trusted completely with your data. It is not very uncommon to snoop over the data for finding interesting patterns to generate ad revenue or divulge your information to a third party, e.g. government and law enforcing agencies. For enterprises who use cloud service, it pose a risk for their intellectual property and business secrets. With more and more employees using cloud for their day to day work, business now face a risk of losing or leaking out information.
In this thesis, I have focused on ways to protect data and information over cloud- a third party not authorized to use your data, all this while still utilizing cloud services for transfer and availability of data. This research proposes an alternative to an on-premise secure infrastructure giving exibility to user for protecting the data and control over it. The project uses cryptography to protect data and create a secure architecture for secret key migration in order to decrypt the data securely for the intended recipient. It utilizes Intel's technology which gives it an added advantage over other existing solutions.
ContributorsSrivastava, Abhijeet (Author) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Thesis advisor) / Zhao, Ziming (Committee member) / Doupe, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
While various collision warning studies in driving have been conducted, only a handful of studies have investigated the effectiveness of warnings with a distracted driver. Across four experiments, the present study aimed to understand the apparent gap in the literature of distracted drivers and warning effectiveness, specifically by studying various warnings presented to drivers while they were operating a smart phone. Experiment One attempted to understand which smart phone tasks, (text vs image) or (self-paced vs other-paced) are the most distracting to a driver. Experiment Two compared the effectiveness of different smartphone based applications (app’s) for mitigating driver distraction. Experiment Three investigated the effects of informative auditory and tactile warnings which were designed to convey directional information to a distracted driver (moving towards or away). Lastly, Experiment Four extended the research into the area of autonomous driving by investigating the effectiveness of different auditory take-over request signals. Novel to both Experiment Three and Four was that the warnings were delivered from the source of the distraction (i.e., by either the sound triggered at the smart phone location or through a vibration given on the wrist of the hand holding the smart phone). This warning placement was an attempt to break the driver’s attentional focus on their smart phone and understand how to best re-orient the driver in order to improve the driver’s situational awareness (SA). The overall goal was to explore these novel methods of improved SA so drivers may more quickly and appropriately respond to a critical event.
ContributorsMcNabb, Jaimie Christine (Author) / Gray, Dr. Rob (Thesis advisor) / Branaghan, Dr. Russell (Committee member) / Becker, Dr. Vaughn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017