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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Z. Berkay Celik (Penn State University), Gang Tan (Penn State University), Patrick McDaniel (Penn State University)

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Orcun Cetin (Delft University of Technology), Carlos Gañán (Delft University of Technology), Lisette Altena (Delft University of Technology), Takahiro Kasama (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology), Daisuke Inoue (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology), Kazuki Tamiya (Yokohama National University), Ying Tie (Yokohama National University), Katsunari Yoshioka (Yokohama National University), Michel van Eeten (Delft…

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Syed Rafiul Hussain (Purdue University), Mitziu Echeverria (University of Iowa), Omar Chowdhury (University of Iowa), Ninghui Li (Purdue University), Elisa Bertino (Purdue University)

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Samuel Weiser (Graz University of Technology), Mario Werner (Graz University of Technology), Ferdinand Brasser (Technische Universität Darmstadt), Maja Malenko (Graz University of Technology), Stefan Mangard (Graz University of Technology), Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

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