Sanae Rosen wins Best Poster Award at CODASPY Conference

CSE PhD candidate Sanae Rosen has won the Best Poster Award for the poster “AppProfiler: a Flexible Method of Exposing Privacy-Related Behavior in Android Applications to End Users,” which was presented at the Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY) along with a conference paper. The conference took place in San Antonio, TX, February 18-20 2013.

The poster and paper address the problem that mobile device users often cannot easily determine the privacy impact of the applications that they download and install. Currently, users can use application descriptions or permissions to try and determine the privacy impact of applications, but those are vague and often inaccurate.

The researchers present a method of automatically extracting information on privacy-sensitive functionality by decompiling the application and looking for known API call patterns. This information is used to provide detailed profiles to users about the potential privacy impact of the applications that they use. These profiles can be accessed through an Android application, called App Profiles, which is in active use by real users.

Ms Rosen works with Prof. Z. Morley Mao in the RobustNet Research Group. More information about AppProfiler and a link to obtain the App Profiles Android app are available on the App Profiles webpage.