Efficient Protection of Android Applications through User Authentication Using Peripheral Devices

Jinseong Kim and Im Y. Jung
Additional contact information
Jinseong Kim: School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea
Im Y. Jung: School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-18

Abstract: Android applications store large amounts of sensitive information that may be exposed and exploited. To prevent this security risk, some applications such as Syrup and KakaoTalk use physical device values to authenticate or encrypt application data. However, by manipulating these physical device values, an attacker can circumvent the authentication by executing a Same Identifier Attack and obtain the same application privileges as the user. In our work, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, Facebook, Amazon, and Syrup were subjected to the Same Identifier Attack, and it was found that an attacker could gain the same privileges as the user, in all five applications. To solve such a problem, we propose a technical scheme—User Authentication using Peripheral Devices. We applied the proposed scheme to a Nexus 5X smartphone running Android version 7.1 and confirmed that the average execution time was 0.005 s, which does not affect the other applications’ execution significantly. We also describe the security aspects of the proposed scheme and its compatibility with the Android platform and other applications. The proposed scheme is practical and efficient in terms of resource usage; therefore, it will be useful for Android users to improve Android application security.

Keywords: Android vulnerability; Android protection; Same Identifier Attack; User Authentication using Peripheral Devices; Android security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/4/1290/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/4/1290/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:1290-:d:142527

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().