Proactive restart as cyber maneuver for Android

Zhiyong Shan, Iulian Neamtiu, Zhiyun Qian, Don Torrieri

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Moving-target defense is an effective strategy for deflecting cyber attacks. The widespread use of smartphones in the tactical field requires novel ways of securing smartphones against an ever-increasing number of zero-day attacks. We propose a new, proactive approach for securing smartphone apps against certain classes of attacks. We leverage smartphone's native support for quick and lossless restarts to make application restart a cyber maneuver meant to deflect and confuse attackers. We propose a time-series entropy metric to quantify attack resilience. We apply our approach to 12 popular Android apps chosen from a variety of domains, including online banking and shopping. Preliminary experiments with using proactive restarts on these apps show that restart is a promising way of increasing attack resilience for a certain class of side-channel attacks named Activity Inference attacks.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2015 IEEE Military Communications Conference, MILCOM 2015
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages19-24
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781509000739
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 14 2015
Externally publishedYes
Event34th Annual IEEE Military Communications Conference, MILCOM 2015 - Tampa, United States
Duration: Oct 26 2015Oct 28 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE Military Communications Conference MILCOM
Volume2015-December

Other

Other34th Annual IEEE Military Communications Conference, MILCOM 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityTampa
Period10/26/1510/28/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Keywords

  • Androids
  • Computer security
  • Graphical user interfaces
  • Humanoid robots
  • Smart phones
  • Time series analysis

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