Jaeho Lee (Rice University), Ang Chen (Rice University), Dan S. Wallach (Rice University)

A good security practice for handling sensitive data, such as passwords, is to overwrite the data buffers with zeros once the data is no longer in use. This protects against attackers who gain a snapshot of a device’s physical memory, whether by in- person physical attacks, or by remote attacks like Meltdown and Spectre. This paper looks at unnecessary password retention in Android phones by popular apps, secure password management apps, and even the lockscreen system process. We have performed a comprehensive analysis of the Android framework and a variety of apps, and discovered that passwords can survive in a variety of locations, including UI widgets where users enter their passwords, apps that retain passwords rather than exchange them for tokens, old copies not yet reused by garbage collectors, and buffers in keyboard apps. We have developed solutions that successfully fix these problems with modest code changes.

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Alexander Sjösten (Chalmers University of Technology), Steven Van Acker (Chalmers University of Technology), Pablo Picazo-Sanchez (Chalmers University of Technology), Andrei Sabelfeld (Chalmers University of Technology)

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Fei Zuo (University of South Carolina), Xiaopeng Li (University of South Carolina), Patrick Young (Temple University), Lannan Luo (University of South Carolina), Qiang Zeng (University of South Carolina), Zhexin Zhang (University of South Carolina)

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Virgil D. Gligor (Carnegie Mellon University), Maverick S. L. Woo (Carnegie Mellon University)

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Seunghyeon Lee (KAIST, S2W LAB Inc.), Changhoon Yoon (S2W LAB Inc.), Heedo Kang (KAIST), Yeonkeun Kim (KAIST), Yongdae Kim (KAIST), Dongsu Han (KAIST), Sooel Son (KAIST), Seungwon Shin (KAIST, S2W LAB Inc.)

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