doi:10.3850/978-981-08-7618-0_1440

ABSTRACT

Smart phones are soon becoming the new generation desktops, the information being stored in them varying from multimedia data to financial transaction details. While security concerns have been raised, the scope of smart phone malware has not been taken under serious consideration. We lay our focus on the Google Android OS. Being a new platform and still in the development stage makes it an easy and viable target for malware propaganda. While Android utilizes a virtual machine ‘sandbox’ approach making it one of the more secure mobile OS’s, there are several other aspects that make Android insecure. We identify and analyze these aspects. To help in preventing future successful attacks on Android users, we design and add additional features to the existing security framework. We then test the effectiveness of our design against self-designed malware and discuss the feasibility of the application of our design.

Keywords: Smart phones, Malware, Mobile phone security, Android operating system.

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