Steve Hanna

Bio: Steve Hanna is an academic researcher from University of California, Berkeley. The author has contributed to research in topics: Malware & Android (operating system). The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 10 publications receiving 3165 citations.

Android permissions demystified

Abstract: Android provides third-party applications with an extensive API that includes access to phone hardware, settings, and user data. Access to privacy- and security-relevant parts of the API is controlled with an install-time application permission system. We study Android applications to determine whether Android developers follow least privilege with their permission requests. We built Stowaway, a tool that detects overprivilege in compiled Android applications. Stowaway determines the set of API calls that an application uses and then maps those API calls to permissions. We used automated testing tools on the Android API in order to build the permission map that is necessary for detecting overprivilege. We apply Stowaway to a set of 940 applications and find that about one-third are overprivileged. We investigate the causes of overprivilege and find evidence that developers are trying to follow least privilege but sometimes fail due to insufficient API documentation.

A survey of mobile malware in the wild

Abstract: Mobile malware is rapidly becoming a serious threat. In this paper, we survey the current state of mobile malware in the wild. We analyze the incentives behind 46 pieces of iOS, Android, and Symbian malware that spread in the wild from 2009 to 2011. We also use this data set to evaluate the effectiveness of techniques for preventing and identifying mobile malware. After observing that 4 pieces of malware use root exploits to mount sophisticated attacks on Android phones, we also examine the incentives that cause non-malicious smartphone tinkerers to publish root exploits and survey the availability of root exploits.

A Symbolic Execution Framework for JavaScript

Abstract: As AJAX applications gain popularity, client-side JavaScript code is becoming increasingly complex. However, few automated vulnerability analysis tools for JavaScript exist. In this paper, we describe the first system for exploring the execution space of JavaScript code using symbolic execution. To handle JavaScript code’s complex use of string operations, we design a new language of string constraints and implement a solver for it. We build an automatic end-to-end tool, Kudzu, and apply it to the problem of finding client-side code injection vulnerabilities. In experiments on 18 live web applications, Kudzu automatically discovers 2 previously unknown vulnerabilities and 9 more that were previously found only with a manually-constructed test suite.

Juxtapp: a scalable system for detecting code reuse among android applications

Abstract: Mobile application markets such as the Android Marketplace provide a centralized showcase of applications that end users can purchase or download for free onto their mobile phones. Despite the influx of applications to the markets, applications are cursorily reviewed by marketplace maintainers due to the vast number of submissions. User policing and reporting is the primary method to detect misbehaving applications. This reactive approach to application security, especially when programs can contain bugs, malware, or pirated (inauthentic) code, puts too much responsibility on the end users. In light of this, we propose Juxtapp, a scalable infrastructure for code similarity analysis among Android applications. Juxtapp provides a key solution to a number of problems in Android security, including determining if apps contain copies of buggy code, have significant code reuse that indicates piracy, or are instances of known malware. We evaluate our system using more than 58,000 Android applications and demonstrate that our system scales well and is effective. Our results show that Juxtapp is able to detect: 1) 463 applications with confirmed buggy code reuse that can lead to serious vulnerabilities in real-world apps, 2) 34 instances of known malware and variants (13 distinct variants of the GoldDream malware), and 3) pirated variants of a popular paid game.

FLAX: Systematic Discovery of Client-side Validation Vulnerabilities in Rich Web Applications.

Abstract: The complexity of the client-side components of web applications has exploded with the increase in popularity of web 2.0 applications. Today, traditional desktop applications, such as document viewers, presentation tools and chat applications are commonly available as online JavaScript applications. Previous research on web vulnerabilities has primarily concentrated on flaws in the server-side components of web applications. This paper highlights a new class of vulnerabilities, which we term client-side validation (or CSV) vulnerabilities. CSV vulnerabilities arise from unsafe usage of untrusted data in the client-side code of the web application that is typically written in JavaScript. In this paper, we demonstrate that they can result in a broad spectrum of attacks. Our work provides empirical evidence that CSV vulnerabilities are not merely conceptual but are prevalent in today’s web applications. We propose dynamic analysis techniques to systematically discover vulnerabilities of this class. The techniques are light-weight, efficient, and have no false positives. We implement our techniques in a prototype tool called FLAX, which scales to real-world applications and has discovered 11 vulnerabilities in the wild so far.

Dissecting Android Malware: Characterization and Evolution

Abstract: The popularity and adoption of smart phones has greatly stimulated the spread of mobile malware, especially on the popular platforms such as Android. In light of their rapid growth, there is a pressing need to develop effective solutions. However, our defense capability is largely constrained by the limited understanding of these emerging mobile malware and the lack of timely access to related samples. In this paper, we focus on the Android platform and aim to systematize or characterize existing Android malware. Particularly, with more than one year effort, we have managed to collect more than 1,200 malware samples that cover the majority of existing Android malware families, ranging from their debut in August 2010 to recent ones in October 2011. In addition, we systematically characterize them from various aspects, including their installation methods, activation mechanisms as well as the nature of carried malicious payloads. The characterization and a subsequent evolution-based study of representative families reveal that they are evolving rapidly to circumvent the detection from existing mobile anti-virus software. Based on the evaluation with four representative mobile security software, our experiments show that the best case detects 79.6% of them while the worst case detects only 20.2% in our dataset. These results clearly call for the need to better develop next-generation anti-mobile-malware solutions.

DREBIN: Effective and Explainable Detection of Android Malware in Your Pocket.

Abstract: Malicious applications pose a threat to the security of the Android platform. The growing amount and diversity of these applications render conventional defenses largely ineffective and thus Android smartphones often remain unprotected from novel malware. In this paper, we propose DREBIN, a lightweight method for detection of Android malware that enables identifying malicious applications directly on the smartphone. As the limited resources impede monitoring applications at run-time, DREBIN performs a broad static analysis, gathering as many features of an application as possible. These features are embedded in a joint vector space, such that typical patterns indicative for malware can be automatically identified and used for explaining the decisions of our method. In an evaluation with 123,453 applications and 5,560 malware samples DREBIN outperforms several related approaches and detects 94% of the malware with few false alarms, where the explanations provided for each detection reveal relevant properties of the detected malware. On five popular smartphones, the method requires 10 seconds for an analysis on average, rendering it suitable for checking downloaded applications directly on the device.

FlowDroid: precise context, flow, field, object-sensitive and lifecycle-aware taint analysis for Android apps

Abstract: Today's smartphones are a ubiquitous source of private and confidential data. At the same time, smartphone users are plagued by carelessly programmed apps that leak important data by accident, and by malicious apps that exploit their given privileges to copy such data intentionally. While existing static taint-analysis approaches have the potential of detecting such data leaks ahead of time, all approaches for Android use a number of coarse-grain approximations that can yield high numbers of missed leaks and false alarms. In this work we thus present FlowDroid, a novel and highly precise static taint analysis for Android applications. A precise model of Android's lifecycle allows the analysis to properly handle callbacks invoked by the Android framework, while context, flow, field and object-sensitivity allows the analysis to reduce the number of false alarms. Novel on-demand algorithms help FlowDroid maintain high efficiency and precision at the same time. We also propose DroidBench, an open test suite for evaluating the effectiveness and accuracy of taint-analysis tools specifically for Android apps. As we show through a set of experiments using SecuriBench Micro, DroidBench, and a set of well-known Android test applications, FlowDroid finds a very high fraction of data leaks while keeping the rate of false positives low. On DroidBench, FlowDroid achieves 93% recall and 86% precision, greatly outperforming the commercial tools IBM AppScan Source and Fortify SCA. FlowDroid successfully finds leaks in a subset of 500 apps from Google Play and about 1,000 malware apps from the VirusShare project.

Android permissions: user attention, comprehension, and behavior

Abstract: Android's permission system is intended to inform users about the risks of installing applications. When a user installs an application, he or she has the opportunity to review the application's permission requests and cancel the installation if the permissions are excessive or objectionable. We examine whether the Android permission system is effective at warning users. In particular, we evaluate whether Android users pay attention to, understand, and act on permission information during installation. We performed two usability studies: an Internet survey of 308 Android users, and a laboratory study wherein we interviewed and observed 25 Android users. Study participants displayed low attention and comprehension rates: both the Internet survey and laboratory study found that 17% of participants paid attention to permissions during installation, and only 3% of Internet survey respondents could correctly answer all three permission comprehension questions. This indicates that current Android permission warnings do not help most users make correct security decisions. However, a notable minority of users demonstrated both awareness of permission warnings and reasonable rates of comprehension. We present recommendations for improving user attention and comprehension, as well as identify open challenges.

The Quest to Replace Passwords: A Framework for Comparative Evaluation of Web Authentication Schemes

Abstract: We evaluate two decades of proposals to replace text passwords for general-purpose user authentication on the web using a broad set of twenty-five usability, deployability and security benefits that an ideal scheme might provide. The scope of proposals we survey is also extensive, including password management software, federated login protocols, graphical password schemes, cognitive authentication schemes, one-time passwords, hardware tokens, phone-aided schemes and biometrics. Our comprehensive approach leads to key insights about the difficulty of replacing passwords. Not only does no known scheme come close to providing all desired benefits: none even retains the full set of benefits that legacy passwords already provide. In particular, there is a wide range from schemes offering minor security benefits beyond legacy passwords, to those offering significant security benefits in return for being more costly to deploy or more difficult to use. We conclude that many academic proposals have failed to gain traction because researchers rarely consider a sufficiently wide range of real-world constraints. Beyond our analysis of current schemes, our framework provides an evaluation methodology and benchmark for future web authentication proposals.