Biblio

Prior work on mobile app reviews has demonstrated that user reviews contain a wealth of information and are seen as a potential source of requirements. However, most of the studies done in this area mainly focused on mining and analyzing user reviews from the US App Store, leaving reviews of users from other countries unexplored. In this paper, we seek to understand if the perception of the same apps between users from other countries and that from the US differs through analyzing user reviews. We retrieve 300,643 user reviews of the 15 most downloaded iOS apps of 2018, published directly by Apple, from nine English-speaking countries over the course of 5 months. We manually classify 3,358 reviews into several software quality and improvement factors. We leverage a random forest based algorithm to identify factors that can be used to differentiate reviews between the US and other countries. Our preliminary results show that all countries have some factors that are proportionally inconsistent with the US.

While enjoying the convenience brought by mobile phones, users have been exposed to high risk of private information leakage. It is known that many applications on mobile devices read private data and send them to remote servers. However how, when and in what scale the private data are leaked are not investigated systematically in the real-world scenario. In this paper, a framework is proposed to analyze the usage data from mobile devices and the traffic data from the mobile network and make a comprehensive privacy leakage detection and privacy inference mining on a large scale of realworld mobile data. Firstly, this paper sets up a training dataset and trains a privacy detection model on mobile traffic data. Then classical machine learning tools are used to discover private usage patterns. Based on our experiments and data analysis, it is found that i) a large number of private information is transmitted in plaintext, and even passwords are transmitted in plaintext by some applications, ii) more privacy types are leaked in Android than iOS, while GPS location is the most leaked privacy in both Android and iOS system, iii) the usage pattern is related to mobile device price. Through our experiments and analysis, it can be concluded that mobile privacy leakage is pervasive and serious.

iOS is one of the most secure operating systems based on policies created and enforced by Apple. Though not impervious or free from vulnerabilities, iOS has remained resilient to many attacks partially based on lower market share of devices, but primarily because of tight controls placed on iOS development and application deployment. Locked iOS devices pose a specific hard problem for both law enforcement and corporate IT dealing with malicious insiders or intrusion scenarios. The need to recover forensic data from locked iOS devices has been of public interest for some time. In this paper, we describe a case study analysis of the iPhone 5c model and our attempts to use electromagnetic (EM) fault-injection as a side channel means to unlock the device. Based on our study, we report on our unsuccessful attempts in unlocking a locked iPhone 5c using this side channel-based approach. As a contribution, we provide initial analysis of the iPhone 5c processor's spectral mapping under different states, a brief survey of published techniques related to iPhone unlock scenarios, and a set of lessons learned and recommended best practices for other researchers who are interested in future EM-based iOS studies.

In this paper, we propose the first traffic monitoring and labeling system for iOS devices, named iMonitor, which not just captures mobile network traffic in .pcap files, but also provides comprehensive APP-related and user-related information of captured packets. Through further analysis, one can obtain the exact APP or device where each packet comes from. The labeled traffic can be used in many research areas for mobile security, such as privacy leakage detection and user profiling. Given the implementation methodology of NetworkExtension framework of iOS 9+, APP labels of iMonitor are reliable enough so that labeled traffic can be regarded as training data for any traffic classification methods. Evaluations on real iPhones demonstrate that iMonitor has no notable impact upon user experience even with slight packet latency. Also, the experiment result supports our motivation that mobile traffic monitoring for iOS is absolutely necessary, as traffic generated by different OSes like Android and iOS are different and unreplaceable in researches.

People increasingly rely on mobile devices for banking transactions or two-factor authentication (2FA) and thus trust in the security provided by the underlying operating system. Simultaneously, jailbreaks gain tremendous popularity among regular users for customizing their devices. In this paper, we show that both do not go well together: Jailbreaks remove vital security mechanisms, which are necessary to ensure a trusted environment that allows to protect sensitive data, such as login credentials and transaction numbers (TANs). We find that all but one banking app, available in the iOS App Store, can be fully compromised by trivial means without reverse-engineering, manipulating the app, or other sophisticated attacks. Even worse, 44% of the banking apps do not even try to detect jailbreaks, revealing the prevalent, errant trust in the operating system's security. This study assesses the current state of security of banking apps and pleads for more advanced defensive measures for protecting user data.

IoT is evolving as a combination of interconnected devices over a particular network. In the proposed paper, we discuss about the security of IoT system in the wireless devices. IoT security is the platform in which the connected devices over the network are safeguarded over internet of things framework. Wireless devices play an eminent role in this kind of networks since most of the time they are connected to the internet. Accompanied by major users cannot ensure their end to end security in the IoT environment. However, connecting these devices over the internet via using IoT increases the chance of being prone to the serious issues that may affect the system and its data if they are not protected efficiently. In the proposed paper, the security of IoT in wireless devices will be enhanced by using ECC. Since the issues related to security are becoming common these days, an attempt has been made in this proposed paper to enhance the security of IoT networks by using ECC for wireless devices.

In Internet of Things (IoT) each object is addressable, trackable and accessible on the Internet. To be useful, objects in IoT co-operate and exchange information. IoT networks are open, anonymous, dynamic in nature so, a malicious object may enter into the network and disrupt the network. Trust models have been proposed to identify malicious objects and to improve the reliability of the network. Recommendations in trust computation are the basis of trust models. Due to this, trust models are vulnerable to bad mouthing and collusion attacks. In this paper, we propose a similarity model to mitigate badmouthing and collusion attacks and show that proposed method efficiently removes the impact of malicious recommendations in trust computation.

Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is widely accepted as a data exchange protocol in Internet of Things (IoT) environment. For security, MQTT supports Transport Layer Security (MQTT-TLS). However, MQTT-TLS provides thing-to-broker channel encryption only because data can still be exposed after MQTT broker. In addition, ACL becomes impractical due to the increasing number of rules for authorizing massive IoT devices. For solving these problems, we propose MQTT Thing-to-Thing Security (MQTT-TTS) which provides thing-to-thing security which prevents data leak. MQTT-TTS also provides the extensibility to include demanded security mechanisms for various security requirements. Moreover, the transparency of MQTT-TTS lets IoT application developers implementing secure data exchange with less programming efforts. Our MQTT-TTS implementation is available on https://github.com/beebit-sec/beebit-mqttc-sdk for evaluation.

In today's IIoT world, most of the IoT platform providers like Microsoft, Amazon and Google are focused towards connecting devices and extract data from the devices and send the data to the Cloud for analytics. Only there are few companies concentrating on Security measures implemented on Edge Node. Gartner estimates that by 2020, more than 25 percent of all enterprise attackers will make use of the Industrial IoT. As Cyber Security Threat is getting more important, it is essential to ensure protection of data both at rest and at motion. The reflex of Cyber Security in the Industrial IoT Domain is much more severe when compared to the Consumer IoT Segment. The new bottleneck in this are security services which employ computationally intensive software operations and system services [1]. Resilient services consume considerable resources in a design. When such measures are added to thwart security attacks, the resource requirements grow even more demanding. Since the standard IIoT Gateways and other sub devices are resource constrained in nature the conventional design for security services will not be applicable in this case. This paper proposes an intelligent architectural paradigm for the Constrained IIoT Gateways that can efficiently identify the Cyber-Attacks in the Industrial IoT domain.

As Electric Power is one of the major concerns, so the concept of the automatic lighting and security system saves the electrical energy. By using the automatic lightning, the consumption of electrical power can be minimized to a greater extent and for that sensors and microcontrollers can be designed in such a manner such that lights get ON/OFF based on motion in a room. The various sensors used for sensing the motion in an area are PIR motion sensor, IR Motion Sensor. An IR sensor senses the heat of an object and detects its motion within some range as it emits infrared radiations and this complete process can be controlled by microcontroller. Along with that security system can be applied in this concept by programming the microcontroller in such a way that if there is some movement in an area then lights must get ON/OFF automatically or any alarm must start. This chapter proposes the framework for the smart lightning with security systems in a building so that electrical power can be utilized efficiently and secures the building.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a fairly disruptive technology with inconceivable growth, impact, and capability. We present the role of REST API in the IoT Systems and some initial concepts of IoT, whose technology is able to record and count everything. We as well highlight the concept of middleware that connects these devices and cloud. The appearance of new IoT applications in the cloud has brought new threats to security and privacy of data. Therefore it is required to introduce a secure IoT system which doesn't allow attackers infiltration in the network through IoT devices and also to secure data in transit from IoT devices to cloud. We provide the details on how Representational State Transfer (REST) API allows to securely expose connected devices to applications on cloud and users. In the proposed model, middleware is primarily used to expose device data through REST and to hide details and act as an interface to the user to interact with sensor data.

The similarity detection of the program has important significance in code reuse, plagiarism detection, intellectual property protection and information retrieval methods. Attribute counting methods cannot take into account program semantics. The method based on syntax tree or graph structure has a very high construction cost and low space efficiency. So it is difficult to solve problems in large-scale software systems. This paper uses different decision strategies for different levels, then puts forward a similarity detection method at the file level. This method can make full use of the features of the program and take into account the space-time efficiency. By using static analysis methods, we get function features and control flow features of files. And based on this, we establish the function call graph. The similar degree between two files can be measured with the two graphs. Experimental results show the method can effectively detect similar files. Finally, this paper discusses the direction of development of this method.

With the globalization of manufacturing and supply chains, ensuring the security and trustworthiness of ICs has become an urgent challenge. Split manufacturing (SM) and layout camouflaging (LC) are promising techniques to protect the intellectual property (IP) of ICs from malicious entities during and after manufacturing (i.e., from untrusted foundries and reverse-engineering by end-users). In this paper, we strive for “the best of both worlds,” that is of SM and LC. To do so, we extend both techniques towards 3D integration, an up-and-coming design and manufacturing paradigm based on stacking and interconnecting of multiple chips/dies/tiers. Initially, we review prior art and their limitations. We also put forward a novel, practical threat model of IP piracy which is in line with the business models of present-day design houses. Next, we discuss how 3D integration is a naturally strong match to combine SM and LC. We propose a security-driven CAD and manufacturing flow for face-to-face (F2F) 3D ICs, along with obfuscation of interconnects. Based on this CAD flow, we conduct comprehensive experiments on DRC-clean layouts. Strengthened by an extensive security analysis (also based on a novel attack to recover obfuscated F2F interconnects), we argue that entering the next, third dimension is eminent for effective and efficient IP protection.

Intellectual property (IP) and integrated circuit (IC) piracy are of increasing concern to IP/IC providers because of the globalization of IC design flow and supply chains. Such globalization is driven by the cost associated with the design, fabrication, and testing of integrated circuits and allows avenues for piracy. To protect the designs against IC piracy, we propose a fingerprinting scheme based on side-channel power analysis and machine learning methods. The proposed method distinguishes the ICs which realize a modified netlist, yet same functionality. Our method doesn't imply any hardware overhead. We specifically focus on the ability to detect minimal design variations, as quantified by the number of logic gates changed. Accuracy of the proposed scheme is greater than 96 percent, and typically 99 percent in detecting one or more gate-level netlist changes. Additionally, the effect of temperature has been investigated as part of this work. Results depict 95.4 percent accuracy in detecting the exact number of gate changes when data and classifier use the same temperature, while training with different temperatures results in 33.6 percent accuracy. This shows the effectiveness of building temperature-dependent classifiers from simulations at known operating temperatures.

Trademarks are recognizable images and/or words used to distinguish various products or services. They become associated with the reputation, innovation, quality, and warranty of the products. Countries around the world have offices for industrial/intellectual property (IP) registration. A new trademark image in application for registration should be distinct from all the registered trademarks. Due to the volume of trademark registration applications and the size of the databases containing existing trademarks, it is impossible for humans to make all the comparisons visually. Therefore, technological tools are essential for this task. In this work we use a pre-trained, publicly available Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) VGG19 that was trained on the ImageNet database. We adapted the VGG19 for the trademark image retrieval (TIR) task by fine tuning the network using two different databases. The VGG19v was trained with a database organized with trademark images using visual similarities, and the VGG19c was trained using trademarks organized by using conceptual similarities. The database for the VGG19v was built using trademarks downloaded from the WEB, and organized by visual similarity according to experts from the IP office. The database for the VGG19c was built using trademark images from the United States Patent and Trademarks Office and organized according to the Vienna conceptual protocol. The TIR was assessed using the normalized average rank for a test set from the METU database that has 922,926 trademark images. We computed the normalized average ranks for VGG19v, VGG19c, and for a combination of both networks. Our method achieved significantly better results on the METU database than those published previously.

A digital watermarking technique is an alternative method to protect the intellectual property of digital images. This paper presents a hybrid blind watermarking technique formulated by combining RDWT with SVD considering a trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. Watermark embedding locations are determined using a modified entropy of the host image. Watermark embedding is employed by examining the orthogonal matrix U obtained from the hybrid scheme RDWT-SVD. In the proposed scheme, the watermark image in binary format is scrambled by Arnold chaotic map to provide extra security. Our scheme is tested under different types of signal processing and geometrical attacks. The test results demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides higher robustness and less distortion than other existing schemes in withstanding JPEG2000 compression, cropping, scaling and other noises.

Within “Industrie 4.0” approach 3D printing technology is characterized as one of the disruptive innovations. Conventional supply chains are replaced by value-added networks. The spatially distributed development of printed components, e.g. for the rapid delivery of spare parts, creates a new challenge when differentiating between “original part”, “copy” or “counterfeit” becomes necessary. This is especially true for safety-critical products. Based on these changes classic branded products adopt the characteristics of licensing models as we know them in the areas of software and digital media. This paper describes the use of digital rights management as a key technology for the successful transition to Additive Manufacturing methods and a key for its commercial implementation and the prevention of intellectual property theft. Risks will be identified along the process chain and solution concepts are presented. These are currently being developed by an 8-partner project named SAMPL (Secure Additive Manufacturing Platform).

Machine learning, specifically deep learning is becoming a key technology component in application domains such as identity management, finance, automotive, and healthcare, to name a few. Proprietary machine learning models - Machine Learning IP - are developed and deployed at the network edge, end devices and in the cloud, to maximize user experience. With the proliferation of applications embedding Machine Learning IPs, machine learning models and hyper-parameters become attractive to attackers, and require protection. Major players in the semiconductor industry provide mechanisms on device to protect the IP at rest and during execution from being copied, altered, reverse engineered, and abused by attackers. In this work we explore system security architecture mechanisms and their applications to Machine Learning IP protection.

This paper presents a methodology for IP core protection of CE devices from both buyer's and seller's perspective. In the presented methodology, buyer fingerprint is embedded along seller watermark during architectural synthesis phase of IP core design. The buyer fingerprint is inserted during scheduling phase while seller watermark is implanted during register allocation phase of architectural synthesis process. The presented approach provides a robust mechanisms of IP core protection for both buyer and seller at zero area overhead, 1.1 % latency overhead and 0.95 % design cost overhead compared to a similar approach (that provides only protection to IP seller).

The aim of this work is to perform an analysis on Technology Transfer strategies for the development of Serious Games at Public National Universities. The results can be extrapolated to other research topics and institutions. First of all, the University role as a producer of knowledge is studied, and possible scenarios for Technology Transfer to third-parties are considered. Moreover, the actors involved in the research and development processes and their corresponding Intellectual Property rights on the Research Results are identified and analysed. Finally, an Intellectual Property Rights protection analysis is undertaken to the different components of a Serious Game type of product, through the modalities of invention patents, utility models, industrial models and designs, brands and author rights. The work concludes that public universities are best fitted as knowledge factories, and the most promising scenario in Technology Transfer is that universities manage their Intellectual Property Rights and licence them to third-party institutions to handle commercialization, while keeping favorable conditions to finance subsequent research and ensuring that products derived from Research Results will be reachable by the society.

The aim of this research paper is to highlight the intellectual property place and role within an industrial knowledge-based organization which performs design activities. The research begins by presenting the importance of integrating intellectual property policy implementation with quality policy. The research is based on the setting of objectives in the intellectual property field. This research also establishes some intellectual property strategies, and improvement measures for intellectual property protection management. The basis for these activities is correlation of the quality policy with an intellectual property policy, as well as the point of strength identified in the studied organization. The issues discussed in this scientific paper conclude on the possibility of the implementation of standards in the intellectual property field.

As the accessibility of high-resolution smartphone camera has increased and an improved computational speed, it is now convenient to build Business Card Readers on mobile phones. The project aims to design and develop a Business Card Reader (BCR) Application for iOS devices, using an open-source OCR Engine - Tesseract. The system accuracy was tested and evaluated using a dataset of 55 digital business cards obtained from an online repository. The accuracy result of the system was up to 74% in terms of both text recognition and data detection. A comparative analysis was carried out against a commercial business card reader application and our application performed vastly reasonable.

The occurrence of security vulnerabilities in kernel, especially for macOS/iOS kernel XNU, has increased rapidly in recent years. Naturally, concerns were raised due to the high risks they would lead to, which in general are much more serious than common application vulnerabilities. However, discovering XNU kernel vulnerabilities is always very challenging, and the main approach in practice is still manual analysis, which obviously is not a scalable method. In this paper, we perform an in-depth empirical study on the 406 published XNU kernel vulnerabilities to identify distinguishing characteristics of them and then leverage the features to guide our vulnerability detection, i.e., locating suspicious functions. To further improve the efficiency of vulnerability detection, we present KInspector, a new and lightweight framework to detect XNU kernel vulnerabilities by leveraging feedback-based fuzzing techniques. We thoroughly evaluate our approach on XNU with various versions, and the results turn out to be quite promising: 21 N/0-day vulnerabilities have been discovered in our experiments.

Increased use of secure chat and voice/ video apps has transformed the social life. While the benefits and facilitations are seemingly limitless, so are the asscoiacted vulnerabilities and threats. Besides ensuring confidentiality requirements for common users, known facts of non-readable contents over the network make these apps more attractive for criminals. Though access to contents of cryptograhically secure sessions is not possible, network forensics of secure apps can provide interesting information which can be of great help during criminal invetigations. In this paper, we presented a novel framework of profiling the secure chat and voice/ video calling apps which can be employed to extract hidden patterns about the app, information of involved parties, activities of chatting, voice/ video calls, status indications and notifications while having no information of communication protocol of the app and its security architecture. Signatures of any secure app can be developed though our framework and can become base of a large scale solution. Our methodology is considered very important for different cases of criminal investigations and bussiness intelligence solutions for service provider networks. Our results are applicable to any mobile platform of iOS, android and windows.

Software Engineering is a field of new challenges every day. With every passing day, new technologies emerge. There was an era of web Applications, but the time has changed and most of the web Applications are available as Mobile Applications as well. The Mobile Applications are either android based or iOS based. To deliver error free, secure and reliable Application, it is necessary to test the Applications properly. Software testing is a phase of software development life cycle, where we test an Application in all aspects. Nowadays different type of tools are available for testing an Application automatically but still we have too many challenges for applying test cases on a given Application. In this paper the authors will discuss the challenges of automation of test cases for a Mobile based payment Application.