June IEEE Computer Issue Devoted to Mobile Security

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 16:30:43 -0400
ieee-cs, issa, mobile, security

Computer, the flagship publication of the IEEE Computer Society, is a monthly publication aimed at computing professionals. Their June, 2014 issue features mobile app security. It should be available from their site in the next several days: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/computer (accessible to members, and to the UMBC community from campus IP addresses)

Here's info from the e-mail promo:

Mobile App Security
Computing's relatively rapid migration to mobile platforms has helped redefine our devices' role in our everyday lives. These advances have led to a correspondingly rapid shift in attacks and malware on mobile platforms. This issue’s five cover features explore new mobile application security strategies and models to contain and diminish these threats.

Thwarting Obfuscated Malware via Differential Fault Analysis
Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, Juan E. Tapiador, Flavio Lombardi, and Roberto Di Pietro describe how detecting malware in mobile applications is increasingly complex as malware developers are better able to hide or obfuscate malicious components. Alterdroid is a dynamic-analysis tool that compares behavioral differences between an original app and numerous automatically generated versions of it containing carefully injected modifications.

RootGuard: Protecting Rooted Android Phones
Though popular for achieving full operation functionality, rooting Android phones opens these devices to significant security threats. Yuru Shao, Xiapu Luo, and Chenxiong Qian describe how RootGuard offers protection from malware with root privileges while providing user flexibility and control.

Smart AppStore: Expanding the Frontiers of Smartphone Ecosystems
According to Félix Gómez Mármol, Gregor Rozinaj, Sebastian Schumann, Ondrej Lábaj, and Juraj Kačur, Smart AppStore offers five important features for today's smartphone users: biometric authentication, multilevel authorization, gesture recognition and navigation, user-tailored reputation scores, and identity management.

Securing the "Bring Your Own Device" Paradigm
The current mobile application distribution model cannot cope with the complex security requirements of the emerging "bring your own device" (BYOD) paradigm. Alessandro Armando, Gabriele Costa, Luca Verderame, and Alessio Merlo explain how a secure metamarket architecture supports the definition and enforcement of BYOD policies and offers a promising prototype implementation tested under realistic conditions.

Security in the Firefox OS and Tizen Mobile Platforms
Olga Gadyatskaya, Fabio Massacci, and Yury Zhauniarovich explore how emerging mobile platforms Firefox OS and Tizen are learning from Android's security successes and trying to avoid its limitations. Although these platforms offer largely novel solutions, they can still learn from one another.

PLUS

Computing and the Law: Privacy and Big Data
Big data's explosive growth has prompted the US government to release new reports that address the issues—particularly related to privacy—as reviewed by Brian M. Gaff, Heather Egan Sussman, and Jennifer Geetter in this month's column.

Computer's June issue also includes columns on Cloud Computing, Entertainment Computing, Computing in Education, and many others.