TripleMon: A multi-layer security framework for mediating inter-process communication on Android

Abstract

As smartphones have become an indispensable part of daily life, mobile users are increasingly relying on them to process personal information with feature-rich applications. This situation requires robust security mechanisms for protecting sensitive applications and data on mobile devices. Android, as one the most popular smartphone operating systems, provides two core security mechanisms, application sandboxing and a permission system. However, recent studies show that these mech- anisms are vulnerable to be passed by a variety of attacks. In this paper, we argue for the need of designing and implementing more comprehensive security mechanisms for Android. We realize that mediating Inter-Process Communication (IPC) channels used by Android applications can mitigate prominent attacks effectively and efficiently. Based on this observation, we propose a practical multi-layer security framework called TRIPLEMON to support policy-based mediation on Android IPC. We also dis- cuss and evaluate a proof-of-concept prototype of TRIPLEMON along with the experimental results derived from real malware samples and synthetic attacks.