Improving the Permission Model to Protect the Smartphone Users' Privacy and Applying it on Android

摘要

Android is an open source mobile operating system that has gained popularity around the world. However, the open source platform has some security vulnerabilities that can affect users' privacy and security. For instance, many applications declare unnecessary permissions for accessing sensitive data and resources before installing the application, and users don't have control over those permissions. Therefore, there are always chances for leaking users' private data. In this study, an attempt is made to find out reasons behind data leaking in various smartphone operating systems, analyze the basic protection model of the Android operating system, find out a reverse engineering solution, and provide a feasibility test of this solution to improve the permission model to protect users' privacy.