Malware ImprovementsA Closer Look

1. Pranav Saini Department of Information Technology

BVCOE, New Delhi, India

2. Yogesh Madaan Department of Information Technology

BVCOE, New Delhi, India

ORGANIZATION OF PRESENTATION

1. Introduction

2. Android OS

3. Literature Review

4. Objectives of the Study

5. Research Findings & Conclusions

6. Future Scope & Challenges

7. References

INTRODUCTION

• The mobile phone market today performs very well. In many

countries, especially in Western Europe and North America, the

number of cell phone subscriptions exceeds the population count.

• According to the Gartner market research firm, smartphones

accounted for 66 percent of the total mobile phone market in 2014.

• Also, according to data collected by IDC, Android dominates the

smartphone OS market with a 76.6% share in 2014 and an average

market share of approx. 70% since 2012.

INTRODUCTION

•Every day, more users are using mobile devices to access services,

view data, and pursue personal/business interests. Moreover, many

of these devices are not controlled by the administrator, meaning that

sensitive data is not subject to the security and Data Loss Prevention

policies.

•To complicate matters, today’s mobile devices are not islands—

they are connected to an entire ecosystem of supporting cloud and

PC-based services. Many users directly synchronize their mobile

device with their home computer to back up key device settings and

data. In such scenarios, key assets may be stored in any number of

insecure locations.

INTRODUCTION

•In view of the above, we tried to review and suggest changes to the

security models of the Android OS, in order to understand the

impact it will have as its adoption grows within the world.

•The paper is mainly focussed on the Android platform,

development of various malwares for the platform, different attacks

possible and their effects and finally trying to provide a solution to

the increasing problems.

ANDROID OS•The remarkable history of Android started in 2005, when Google

acquired the 2003-founded start-up Android Inc. Until then, only little

was known about the young organization's work, whose main business

was developing software for mobile handsets.

•The Open Handset Alliance (a Google Initiative, 2007) announced the

development of Android, which featured a complete software platform for

mobile handsets including an operating system, middleware and key

mobile applications.

Android was the first mass-produced consumer-market open source

mobile platform that allowed developers to easily create applications and

users to readily install them.

ANDROID OS

FIG. 2.1 ANDROID ARCHITECTURE – SOFTWARE STACK

MALWARE CONCEPT

Malicious software ("malware") is designed specifically to target a mobile

device system, such as a tablet or smartphone to damage or disrupt the device.

 Most mobile malware is designed to disable a mobile device, allow a malicious

user to remotely control the device or to steal personal information stored on

the device.

Among the mobile phones malware attacks, the Android smart phones are

largely targeted by the malware users and hackers. This is mainly due to the

reason that, Android applications market provides an open platform to all the

application. As Google is looking mainly for developing and selling Apps, they

are quite relaxed on the security aspects.

MALWARE CONCEPT – SOME EXAMPLES

A malware enters your phone when you download any malicious app into your

android phone. Most of the Android applications are vulnerable for any third

party intervention. Though the unauthorised third party access has been reported

earlier, you can still find increased malware attacks on the android phones.

Most dangerous Android malware attacks:

Fake Banking Apps: This lured the customers into entering their online account

login details.

DroidDream: It infected devices, breached the android security sandbox and

stole data.

AndroidOS fake player: It seems to be a media player and silently sends SMS to

premium SMS numbers.

MALWARE CONCEPT

In 2013 Android grew to a very large number: 87%. This was its share of the

global smartphone market then. It also grew to an even larger one: 97%. This

was Android’s share of global mobile malware.

Source: Forbes, 2014

LITERATURE REVIEWThe literature analysis carried here for almost a decade (from 2005 to 2014) from acclaimed researchers of international repute, is intended to serve the global Mobile Computing Community – Developers and Users alike - who need to take more informed decisions regarding Mobile Security and Risks associated with it.

1. Reinfelder, Lena, Zinaida Benenson, and Freya Gassmann compared Android and iPhone users according to their security and privacy awareness when handling apps. Based on an online survey conducted with over 700 German respondents (mostly university students) they found out that Android users seem to be more aware of the risks associated with the app usage than iPhone users.

2. Daniel Tse attempted to give feasible solutions to improve Android’s security model from the user’s awareness level as well as technical level.

LITERATURE REVIEW3. According to Ryan Farmer (Senior Resourcer and Consultant,

Acumin Consulting), there is no one-stop effective security measure that can be implemented on an Android device. He suggested that providing a suite of tools which can be installed on to a device, or offering an encrypted preloaded SD card, will ensure that exponential growth in mobile malware does not affect the organisation.

4. Research done by Yajin Zhou and Xuxian Jiang presented a systematic characterization of existing Android Malware. The results of this characterization of malware samples showed that (1) 86.0% of them repackage legitimate apps to include malicious payloads; (2) 36.7 contain platform-level exploits to escalate privelege; (3) 93.0% exhibit bot-like capability. Furthermore, evaluation with four existing mobile anti-virus software showed that the best case detects 79.6% of them the worst case detects only 20.2%.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

•To fill the research gaps and to sort out the emerging issues, the following

objectives are defined:

1. To increase awareness and basic knowledge about the standard

Android OS architecture and operation.

2. To identify the bottlenecks and loopholes in the Android Security

Model.

3. To analyse the development of botnets and malwares against the

current operating system and design its counterparts to defend system

from same types, in the coming future.

RESEARCH FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS

1. On the basis of our study, we can easily conclude that Android security

majorly depends on the user awareness. If the users are aware of how

their smartphones can be attacked/broken into, they would perhaps

have a more guarded and preventive approach.

2. Although, due to the open source nature of this platform, persistence of

a malware for a longer time is much easier than that in other platforms.

Lack in implementation of security checks for an application even

being published on the Android Play Store makes it quite vulnerable.

3. We have analysed latest research to identify novel malware techniques

that can be expected to come into action in the foreseeable future.

4. We have also identified major system level enhancements for the

Android platform as well as novel countermeasures that can be used for

countering these advanced attacks.

RESEARCH FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS

FUTURE SCOPES & CHALLENGES

This study will provide both developers and users alike, a deep insight into

the workings and shortcomings of the Android OS along with the following

points:

1. Restructuring/Modifying the Android Permissions Model : The

permissions model is based on permissions, which are constructs that

various APIs require calling apps to have before they will provide

certain services, can be seen as a preventive factor.

2. Alpha-testing of suspicious applications on the Android Play Store is

also an important issue to look into.

3. We hope to build a malware detection application in the coming future

based on these malware attacks.

REFERENCES

[1] YAJIN, Z., AND XUXIAN, J. Dissecting android malware:

Characterization and evolution. In Proceedings of the 33rd IEEE

Symposium on Security and Privacy (may 2012)..

[2] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2325812/androids-growth-to-

slow-following-record-capture-of-80-percent-market-share-in-2013

[3] Tse, Daniel, et al. "STRATEGIES IN IMPROVING ANDROID

SECURITY." (2014).

[4] http://androidprogramz.blogspot.in/2012/06/architecture-of-android-in-

order-to.html

[5]http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/

An_Overview_of_the_Android_Architecture

REFERENCES

[6]http://www.acumin.co.uk/download_files/WhitePaper/

android_white_paper_2.pdf

[7] Reinfelder, Lena, Zinaida Benenson, and Freya Gassmann. "Differences

between Android and iPhone Users in Their Security and Privacy Awareness.

"Trust, Privacy, and Security in Digital Business. Springer International

Publishing, 2014. 156-167.

[8] http://developer.android.com/tools/building/index.html

[9] http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/future-mobile-malware

[10] Gordon Kelly. “Report: 97% Of Mobile Malware Is On Android. This Is

The Easy Way You Stay Safe”. Forbes, 2013.

[11] Press Release, “Gartner Says Sales of Smartphones Grew 20 Percent in

Third Quarter of 2014.” Gartner, 2014.

THANK YOU