Mobile Security

We are working towards improving security of mobile devices. In [1], we analyze the permission requests of more than 180,000 Android applications. We find statistically relevant permission request patterns that correlate with the user ratings of an application. In [2,3], we propose a continuous authentication method based on the way how users touch the touch-screen of their device. In [4], we investigate how the periodic syncronization and update behavior of installed smart phone applications reveal the identity of the phone. Finally, in [5], we argue that security mechanisms of smart phones should adapt to the usage context and to the environment of the phone.

Relevant publications:
  1. Mario Frank, Ben Dong, Adrienne Porter-Felt, and Dawn Song.
    "Mining Permission Request Patterns from Android and Facebook Applications" . In ICDM 2012: IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, pages 870-875, IEEE 2012 (acc. rate: 19.97%)
    [ abstract | bib | pdf (short version) | pdf (full version) | doi | data | code ]
     
  2. Mario Frank, Ralf Biedert, Eugene Ma, Ivan Martinovic, and Dawn Song
    "Touchalytics: On the Applicability of Touchscreen Input as a Behavioral Biometric for Continuous Authentication". In IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (Vol. 8, No. 1), pages 136-148, IEEE 2013.
    [ abstract | bib | pdf | doi | data | poster (pdf) | paper history]
     
  3. Neil Zhenqiang Gong, Mathias Payer, Reza Moazzezi, Mario Frank.
    "Forgery-Resistant Touch-based Authentication on Mobile Devices". In ASIACCS '16: 11th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security , pages 499-510, ACM 2016 (acc. rate 20.9%)
    [ abstract | bib | pdf | pdf (arXiv) | doi ]

  4. Tim Stöber, Mario Frank, Ivan Martinovic and Jens Schmitt.
    "Who do you sync you are? Smartphone Fingerprinting based on Application Behaviour". In WiSec'13: ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks , pages 7-12, ACM 2013 (acc. rate: 22%)
    [ abstract | bib | pdf | doi ]
     
  5. Ian Fischer, Cynthia Kuo, Ling Huang and Mario Frank.
    "Smartphones: Not Smart Enough?". In 2nd ACM CCS Workshop on Security and Privacy in Mobile Devices (SPSM'12).
    [ abstract | bib | pdf | doi ]