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.

View More Papers

Don't Trust The Locals: Investigating the Prevalence of Persistent...

Marius Steffens (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security), Christian Rossow (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security), Martin Johns (TU Braunschweig), Ben Stock (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security)

Read More

TEE-aided Write Protection Against Privileged Data Tampering

Lianying Zhao (Concordia University), Mohammad Mannan (Concordia University)

Read More

Establishing Software Root of Trust Unconditionally

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

Read More

Automating Patching of Vulnerable Open-Source Software Versions in Application...

Ruian Duan (Georgia Institute of Technology), Ashish Bijlani (Georgia Institute of Technology), Yang Ji (Georgia Institute of Technology), Omar Alrawi (Georgia Institute of Technology), Yiyuan Xiong (Peking University), Moses Ike (Georgia Institute of Technology), Brendan Saltaformaggio (Georgia Institute of Technology), Wenke Lee (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Read More