Biblio
In this paper, we highlight and study the threat arising from the unattended wearable devices pre-paired with a smartphone over a wireless communication medium. Most users may not lock their wearables due to their small form factor, and may strip themselves off of these devices often, leaving or forgetting them unattended while away from homes (or shared office spaces). An “insider” attacker (potentially a disgruntled friend, roommate, colleague, or even a spouse) can therefore get hold of the wearable, take it near the user's phone (i.e., within radio communication range) at another location (e.g., user's office), and surreptitiously use it across physical barriers for various nefarious purposes, including pulling and learning sensitive information from the phone (such as messages, photos or emails), and pushing sensitive commands to the phone (such as making phone calls, sending text messages and taking pictures). The attacker can then safely restore the wearable, wait for it to be left unattended again and may repeat the process for maximum impact, while the victim remains completely oblivious to the ongoing attack activity. This malicious behavior is in sharp contrast to the threat of stolen wearables where the victim would unpair the wearable as soon as the theft is detected. Considering the severity of this threat, we also respond by building a defense based on audio proximity, which limits the wearable to interface with the phone only when it can pick up on an active audio challenge produced by the phone.
For mobile phone users, short message service (SMS) is the most commonly used text-based communication type on mobile devices. Users can interact with other users and services via SMS. For example, users can send private messages, use information services, apply for a job advertisement, conduct bank transactions, and so on. Users should be very careful when using SMS. During the sending of SMS, the message content should be aware that it can be captured and act accordingly. Based on these findings, the elderly, called as “Silent Generation” which represents 70 years or older adults, are text messaging much more than they did in the past. Therefore, they need solutions which are both simple and secure enough if there is a need to send sensitive information via SMS. In this study, we propose and develop an android application to secure text messages. The application has a simple and easy-to-use graphical user interface but provides significant security.
Sensitive data such as text messages, contact lists, and personal information are stored on mobile devices. This makes authentication of paramount importance. More security is needed on mobile devices since, after point-of-entry authentication, the user can perform almost all tasks without having to re-authenticate. For this reason, many authentication methods have been suggested to improve the security of mobile devices in a transparent and continuous manner, providing a basis for convenient and secure user re-authentication. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis and literature review on transparent authentication systems for mobile device security. This review indicates a need to investigate when to authenticate the mobile user by focusing on the sensitivity level of the application, and understanding whether a certain application may require a protection or not.