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Burn After Reading: Expunging Execution Footprints of Android Apps

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Network and System Security (NSS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 11058))

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Abstract

Mobile apps nowadays are consuming and producing a mass of sensitive data. In response, a wide variety of privacy protection techniques and tools have been proposed since mobile users have the escalating privacy concerns. However, only a few privacy protection schemes consider how to thoroughly erase the runtime information of an app after its execution. Various traceable vestiges, called execution footprints, are kept by the device which could be used to steal and speculate user’s privacy. We argue that a mobile operating system should not only establish sound isolation between different apps but also need to provide a fine-grained execution footprint expunging mechanism to ensure using an app confidentially. To achieve this target, Mist, a modified Android OS, to generate fine-grained data expunging policies, is designed and implemented. Mist is a lightweight ephemeral container, which does not require the support of specialized hardware or operation mode and it will be disposed of securely when in use apps. In this container, Mist persistently tracks every message generated by the app and then it deletes them during and after the execution. Experiments based on 200 apps show that execution footprints still have been neglected by the Android OS even after the app removal. By utilizing the expunging mechanism Mist provided, those footprints are erased to guarantee a private and confidential execution.

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and helpful suggestions. This paper is partially supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U1636217), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFB0801200), and a research grant from the Ant Financial Services Group.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lab of Cryptology and Computer Security, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Junliang Shu, Juanru Li, Yuanyuan Zhang & Dawu Gu

Authors
  1. Junliang Shu
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  2. Juanru Li
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  3. Yuanyuan Zhang
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  4. Dawu Gu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junliang Shu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Man Ho Au

  2. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Siu Ming Yiu

  3. Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

    Jin Li

  4. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Xiapu Luo

  5. City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Cong Wang

  6. University of Salerno and University of Naples Federico II, Fisciano, Italy

    Aniello Castiglione

  7. CISPA Helmholtz Center i.G. GmbH, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Kamil Kluczniak

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Shu, J., Li, J., Zhang, Y., Gu, D. (2018). Burn After Reading: Expunging Execution Footprints of Android Apps. In: Au, M., et al. Network and System Security. NSS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11058. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02744-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02744-5_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02743-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02744-5

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