DroidChamber: Multilevel Security for Mobile Devices to Support Telemedicine on the Battlefield.

Abstract

Apps that support telemedicine on the battlefield typically run on classified devices and transmit information over classified networks, whereas the medical data the apps create and transmit are unclassified. Current systems treat these data as classified, so a cross-domain solution is required to transfer the data back to an unclassified domain, which adds delays and costs to the process of transmitting critical data needed to treat injured warfighters. To address this gap, ATC-NY developed DroidChamber, which is a software-based Android system that enables multilevel security and which runs on smartphones and tablets. DroidChamber enables warfighters to execute apps in multiple security domains without risking information leakage. DroidChamber v6 is a collection of mobile device management and security containerization technologies targeting Android 6, and it applies these technologies by leveraging Linux kernel operating-system-level virtualization technologies. DroidChamber v10 takes advantage of Android Work Profiles and Samsung's Knox technology in Android 10, which provides the ability to provision separate "work" and "personal" profiles that securely isolate applications; apps within each profile can further be isolated through the built-in Android controls and the Knox Application Policy. DroidChamber is a software-based Android system, so it requires no added hardware to be attached or integrated with an end-user device. DroidChamber's innovation is isolation of specific Android app resources (e.g., networking) enforced with fine-grained security policies. With DroidChamber, a medic can connect their device to different security domains, giving a wider range of access to medical information in a tactical environment. DroidChamber improves telemedicine applications by enabling the warfighter to share information without requiring a cross-domain guard that may erroneously block some data. Using DroidChamber, a warfighter can use a single mobile device to manage/transmit data at different security levels, thereby reducing the cost and complexity of a mission.