doi: 10.17586/2226-1494-2016-16-1-90-95


(IN-) PRIVACY IN MOBILE APPS. CUSTOMER OPPORTUNITIES (in Engl.)

Y. S. Chemerkin, T. I. Kuzmenko


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Article in English

For citation: Chemerkin Yu.S., Kuzmenko T.I. (In-)privacy in mobile apps. Customer opportunities. Scientific and Technical Journal of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, 2016, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 90–95.

Abstract

Subject of Study. The paper presents the results of an investigation of cross-platform mobile applications. This paper focuses on a cross-platform app data investigation in purpose of creating a database that helps to make decisions from data privacy viewpoint. These decisions refer to knowledge about mobile apps that are available to the public, especially on how consumer data is protected while it is stored locally or transferred via network as well as what type of data may leak. Methods. This paper proposes a forensics methodology as a cornerstone of an app data investigation process. The object of research is an application data protection under different security control types among modern mobile OS. The subject of research is a modification of forensics approach and behavioral analysis to examine application data privacy in order to find data that are not properly handled by applications which lead to data leakages, defining protection control type without forensics limits. In addition, this paper relies on using the simplest tools, proposing a limit to examine locally stored data and transmitted over the network to cover all data, excluding memory and code analysis unless it is valuable (behavioral analysis). The research methods of the tasks set in the paper include digital forensics approach methods depending on data conception (at-rest, in-use/memory, in-transit) with behavioral analysis of application, and static and dynamic application code analysis. Main Results. The research was carried out for the scope of that thesis, and the following scientific results were obtained. First, the methods used to investigate the privacy of application data allow considering application features and protection code design and flaws in the context of incomplete user awareness about the privacy state due to external activity of the developer. Second, the knowledge set about facts of application data protection that allows making a knowledge database to implement the missing privacy and security protection control and provide the privacy requirements (keeping the users informed about possibility to avoid untrusted usage cases). Practical Relevance. Practical relevance of the received results is the following: first, the set of knowledge facts about each examined application to privacy score per application, per application category (IM, travel, etc.), per OS, etc; second, the developed method under the forensics approach can be used to carry out analysis of the application data privacy in relation to the specified requirements including audit, reconfiguring EMM application policiesand reasons for theircommissioning.


Keywords: mobile security, mobile application vulnerability, data leakage, data privacy, EMM

Acknowledgements. The paper is recommended by the Organizing committee of the International conference “Information Security and Protection of Information Technology 2015” (http://ispit.ifmo.ru/)

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