Abdallah Dawoud (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security), Sven Bugiel (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security)

Android's application framework plays a crucial part in protecting users' private data and the system integrity. Consequently, it has been the target of various prior works that analyzed its security policy and enforcement. Those works uncovered different security problems, including incomplete documentation, permission re-delegation within the framework, and inconsistencies in access control. However, all but one of those prior works were based on static code analysis. Thus, their results provide a one-sided view that inherits the limitations and drawbacks of applying static analysis to the vast, complex code base of the application framework. Even more, the performances of different security applications---including malware classification and least-privileged apps---depend on those analysis results, but those applications are currently tarnished by imprecise and incomplete results as a consequence of this imbalanced analysis methodology. To complement and refine this methodology and consequently improve the applications that are dependent on it, we add dynamic analysis of the application framework to the current research landscape and demonstrate the necessity of this move for improving the quality of prior results and advancing the field. Applying our solution, called Dynamo, to four prominent use-cases from the literature and taking a synoptical view on the results, we verify but also refute and extend the existing results of prior static analysis solutions. From the manual investigation of the root causes of discrepancies between results, we draw new insights and expert knowledge that can be valuable in improving both static and dynamic testing of the application framework.

View More Papers

WeepingCAN: A Stealthy CAN Bus-off Attack

Gedare Bloom (University of Colorado Colorado Springs) Best Paper Award Winner ($300 cash prize)!

Read More

PHOENIX: Device-Centric Cellular Network Protocol Monitoring using Runtime Verification

Mitziu Echeverria (The University of Iowa), Zeeshan Ahmed (The University of Iowa), Bincheng Wang (The University of Iowa), M. Fareed Arif (The University of Iowa), Syed Rafiul Hussain (Pennsylvania State University), Omar Chowdhury (The University of Iowa)

Read More

From WHOIS to WHOWAS: A Large-Scale Measurement Study of...

Chaoyi Lu (Tsinghua University; Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology), Baojun Liu (Tsinghua University; Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology; Qi An Xin Group), Yiming Zhang (Tsinghua University; Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology), Zhou Li (University of California, Irvine), Fenglu Zhang (Tsinghua University), Haixin Duan…

Read More

[WITHDRAWN] First, Do No Harm: Studying the manipulation of...

Shubham Agarwal (Saarland University), Ben Stock (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security)

Read More