Uranine: Real-time privacy leakage monitoring without system modification for android

Vaibhav Rastogi*, Zhengyang Qu, Jedidiah McClurg, Yinzhi Cao, Yan Chen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular. One reason for their popularity is the availability of a wide range of third-party applications, which enrich the environment and increase usability. There are however privacy concerns centered around these applications – users do not know what private data is leaked by the applications. Previous works to detect privacy leakages are either not accurate enough or require operating system changes, which may not be possible due to users’ lack of skills or locked devices. We present Uranine (Uranine is a dye, which finds applications as a flow tracer in medicine and environmental studies.), a system that instruments Android applications to detect privacy leakages in real-time. Uranine does not require any platform modification nor does it need the application source code. We designed several mechanisms to overcome the challenges of tracking information flow across framework code, handling callback functions, and expressing all information-flow tracking at the bytecode level. Our evaluation of Uranine shows that it is accurate at detecting privacy leaks and has acceptable performance overhead.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSecurity and Privacy in Communication Networks - 11th International Conference, SecureComm 2015, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsBhavani Thuraisingham, XiaoFeng Wang, Vinod Yegneswaran
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages256-276
Number of pages21
ISBN (Print)9783319288642
DOIs
StatePublished - 2015
Event11th International Conference Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2015 - Dallas, United States
Duration: Oct 26 2015Oct 29 2015

Publication series

NameLecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST
Volume164
ISSN (Print)1867-8211

Other

Other11th International Conference Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDallas
Period10/26/1510/29/15

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications

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