Android Version Research Articles

Android Application Development for Secure Data Transmission using Steganography

Real time implementation of Steganographic algorithm along with encryption is used to achieve secure data flow across Android mobiles. In this paper, pixel value differencing (PVD) technique one of the steganographic algorithm with AES encryption are implemented using JAVA TM on android platform to achieve high level security for real time multimedia messaging service (MMS) system. One of the important concerns in any communication system is the security of the data transmission from eavesdropper. To overcome this security problem, the most effective technique is the steganography. Steganography is used to hide secret information onside some carrier. Image is taken as a carrier file to hide secret information (text, image, audio). To add more security, encryption is also done on the secret file which will be hidden inside MMS. The Pixel Value Differencing (PVD) technique is used to hide secret information (text, image, audio). Different sizes of secret images are considered keeping the fixed size of cover image and the calculations have been done for MSE and PSNR of image in MATLAB. Later, the results of the PVD are compared with the LSB technique. Encryption and Steganographic algorithms are ported on Sony Xperia M mobile device with Android version 4.3. Keywords – Android Platform, Encryption, LSB, PVD, MMS, MSE, PSNR, Security, Steganography.

Design and development of a secure multi-access, cross-platform telemedicine application – MEETING ROOM

The high costs and inconvenience of visiting a doctor for medical advice have deterred a sizable number of elderly and needy from seeking proper medical treatment promptly, and this may cause their conditions to deteriorate and possibly result in a more severe impact on their daily lives. Thus, this application is designed with the aim to bring about a more convenient form of health care services to these less-privileged segments of the community. In this paper, a secure multi-access cross-platform telemedicine application, known as MEETING ROOM, has been designed and developed to provide easily accessible health care services. The MEETING ROOM application adopts a web-based approach in general to provide the flexibility to run on cross-platform devices. Computing devices with network connectivity can be placed in clinics, day care centres, community centres or even right at the patients’ homes so that they can easily access the application with those devices. It is a hybrid application, comprising of a web portal and a video conferencing part. The web portal is used to manage the system and the users in a secure manner while the video conferencing application provides a convenient communication platform for the patients to consult a doctor on their conditions and for the doctors to hold online meetings. A web-based version and mobile Android version of the video conferencing application are developed to provide the flexibility.

Application of Domain-aware Binary Fuzzing to Aid Android Virtual Machine Testing

The development of a new application virtual machine (VM), like the creation of any complex piece of software, is a bug-prone process. In version 5.0, the widely-used Android operating system has changed from the Dalvik VM to the newly-developed ART VM to execute Android applications. As new iterations of this VM are released, how can the developers aim to reduce the number of potentially security-threatening bugs that make it into the final product? In this paper we combine domain-aware binary fuzzing and differential testing to produce DexFuzz, a tool that exploits the presence of multiple modes of execution within a VM to test for defects. These modes of execution include the interpreter and a runtime that executes ahead-of-time compiled code. We find and present a number of bugs in the in-development version of ART in the Android Open Source Project. We also assess DexFuzz's ability to highlight defects in the experimental version of ART released in the previous version of Android, 4.4, finding 189 crashing programs and 15 divergent programs that indicate defects after only 5,000 attempts.

Using mobile technology to conduct epidemiological investigations.

The aim of this study was to report the experience of an epidemiological field survey for which data were collected and analyzed using tablets. The devices used Epi Info 7 (Android version), which has been modeled a database with variables of the traditional form. Twenty-one households were randomly selected in the study area; 75 residents were registered and completed household interviews with socioeconomic and environmental risk variables. This new technology is a valuable tool for collecting and analyzing data from the field, with advantageous benefits to epidemiological surveys.

The Diabetes Assistant: A Smartphone-Based System for Real-Time Control of Blood Glucose

Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) is an autoimmune disease in which the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas are destroyed and insulin must be injected daily to enable the body to metabolize glucose. Standard therapy for T1DM involves self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) several times daily with a blood glucose meter and injecting insulin via a syringe, pen or insulin pump. An “Artificial Pancreas” (AP) is a closed-loop control system that uses a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), an insulin pump and an internal algorithm to automatically manage insulin infusion to keep the subject’s blood glucose within a desired range. Although no fully closed-loop AP systems are currently commercially available there are intense academic and commercial efforts to produce safe and effective AP systems. In this paper we present the Diabetes Assistant (DiAs), an ultraportable AP research platform designed to enable home studies of Closed Loop Control (CLC) of blood glucose in subjects with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. DiAs consists of an Android (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA) smartphone equipped with communication, control and user interface software wirelessly connected to a continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump. The software consists of a network of mobile applications with well-defined Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) running atop an enhanced version of Android with non-essential elements removed. CLC and safety applications receive real-time data from the CGM and pump, estimate the patient’s metabolic state and risk of hypo- and hyperglycemia, adjust the insulin infusion rate, raise alarms as needed and transmit de-identified data to a secure remote server. Some applications may be replaced by researchers wishing to conduct outpatient ambulatory studies of novel Closed Loop Control, Safety or User Interface modules. Over the past three years the DiAs platform has been used in a series of AP clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Helmsley Charitable Trust and the European Union AP@Home project. Results of clinical trials using DiAs indicate that a smartphone with targeted operating system modifications and appropriate system software can be successfully used in outpatient clinical trials of FDA Class III medical devices such as Artificial Pancreas.

Design and Implementation of Question and Answer System Based on Mobile Phone Platform

Question and Answer System which is designed for the course named “JAVA Program Design and Application” to solve the questions that students ask outside class uses BootStrap technology for the front layout and JSP/Servlet technology for the back-end functions. It has achieved the following functions: student users can submit questions, browse questions, search questions and reply to the questions submitted by other students; while teacher users can answer questions, browse questions, search questions and administrate the subjects of questions and the information of users. In order to use accessibly, not only the mobile website is released, but also the Apps for both Android version and IOS version are provided for users to download.

Understanding of the Behaviour of Android Smartphone Users in Cameroon: Application of the Security

The popularity and adoption of smartphones has greatly attracted mobile attackers, especially for the popular platforms such as Android. In Sub-Saharan countries, the penetration of Android smartphones is considerable. Researchers tend to work mainly on technical aspects such as Android permissions to determine security risks that users face, ignoring other important aspects. This paper studies the behaviour of smartphone users in Cameroon towards security aspects on Android platform, particularly the basic practices for the security of Android recommended by Google. For this, a survey has been conducted through series of interviews with 2.500 Android Smartphones users across five regions of Cameroon: Centre, Adamawa, North, North-West, and Littoral. The research targeted different regions because of local diversity, and to cover a large area of the country to enrich the results. This research reveals that Cameroonian Android users are not aware of the security risks and therefore are directly exposed to attackers because they do not take measures. Alarmingly, it finds that users detain obsolete versions of Android or do not perform updates regularly. In sum, users are not currently (well) informed to apply basic privacy and security decisions on their devices. As it is not present in Cameroon, the present paper goes further on to propose a new web approach in Cameroon to inform and sensitise on security issues and practices in other to protect their information.

DNAApp: a mobile application for sequencing data analysis

Summary: There have been numerous applications developed for decoding and visualization of ab1 DNA sequencing files for Windows and MAC platforms, yet none exists for the increasingly popular smartphone operating systems. The ability to decode sequencing files cannot easily be carried out using browser accessed Web tools. To overcome this hurdle, we have developed a new native app called DNAApp that can decode and display ab1 sequencing file on Android and iOS. In addition to in-built analysis tools such as reverse complementation, protein translation and searching for specific sequences, we have incorporated convenient functions that would facilitate the harnessing of online Web tools for a full range of analysis. Given the high usage of Android/iOS tablets and smartphones, such bioinformatics apps would raise productivity and facilitate the high demand for analyzing sequencing data in biomedical research.Availability and implementation: The Android version of DNAApp is available in Google Play Store as ‘DNAApp’, and the iOS version is available in the App Store. More details on the app can be found at www.facebook.com/APDLab; www.bii.a-star.edu.sg/research/trd/apd.phpThe DNAApp user guide is available at http://tinyurl.com/DNAAppuser, and a video tutorial is available on Google Play Store and App Store, as well as on the Facebook page.Contact: samuelg@bii.a-star.edu.sg

The iOS/Android application “e-SoilMap” for creating a new user-oriented soil map

To enhance the efficiency of soil information in the field survey, we developed the mobile application called “e-SoilMap” for creating a new user-oriented soil map. This application has the following three unique functions: annotatable map, data sharing over the cloud and offline support for allowing the user to create a high-value-added soil map in their Internet space. Both iOS and Android versions of the mobile application mainly consist of three key components: (1) a map manager, (2) a soil manager and (3) a user manager. The map manager is responsible for displaying background maps to the user. The soil manager displays a soil map and related soil information, which are provided by the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences (NIAES), on the background maps. And the user manager is responsible for creating an annotatable map and sharing the user data in the cloud. The “e-SoilMap” provides soil information to users using location-based spatial query processing and allows the creation of annotatable pins on the soil map. The main target of this application was designed to be a wide variety of technical fields such as agronomic assessment, engineering applications, hydrology and hydrogeologic assessments, environmental assessment and policy decisions.

Device analyzer

We collected usage information from 12,500 Android devices in the wild over the course of nearly 2 years. Our dataset contains 53 billion data points from 894 models of devices running 687 versions of Android. Processing the collected data presents a number of challenges ranging from scalability to consistency and privacy considerations. We present our system architecture for collection and analysis of this highly-distributed dataset, discuss how our system can reliably collect time-series data in the presence of unreliable timing information, and discuss issues and lessons learned that we believe apply to many other big data collection projects.

Cider

We present Cider, an operating system compatibility architecture that can run applications built for different mobile ecosystems, iOS or Android, together on the same smartphone or tablet. Cider enhances the domestic operating system, Android, of a device with kernel-managed, per-thread personas to mimic the application binary interface of a foreign operating system, iOS, enabling it to run unmodified foreign binaries. This is accomplished using a novel combination of binary compatibility techniques including two new mechanisms: compile-time code adaptation, and diplomatic functions. Compile-time code adaptation enables existing unmodified foreign source code to be reused in the domestic kernel, reducing implementation effort required to support multiple binary interfaces for executing domestic and foreign applications. Diplomatic functions leverage per-thread personas, and allow foreign applications to use domestic libraries to access proprietary software and hardware interfaces. We have built a Cider prototype, and demonstrate that it imposes modest performance overhead and runs unmodified iOS and Android applications together on a Google Nexus tablet running the latest version of Android.

Cider

We present Cider, an operating system compatibility architecture that can run applications built for different mobile ecosystems, iOS or Android, together on the same smartphone or tablet. Cider enhances the domestic operating system, Android, of a device with kernel-managed, per-thread personas to mimic the application binary interface of a foreign operating system, iOS, enabling it to run unmodified foreign binaries. This is accomplished using a novel combination of binary compatibility techniques including two new mechanisms: compile-time code adaptation, and diplomatic functions. Compile-time code adaptation enables existing unmodified foreign source code to be reused in the domestic kernel, reducing implementation effort required to support multiple binary interfaces for executing domestic and foreign applications. Diplomatic functions leverage per-thread personas, and allow foreign applications to use domestic libraries to access proprietary software and hardware interfaces. We have built a Cider prototype, and demonstrate that it imposes modest performance overhead and runs unmodified iOS and Android applications together on a Google Nexus tablet running the latest version of Android.

Implementation of an App-based neuromuscular training programme to prevent ankle sprains: a process evaluation using the RE-AIM Framework

Background/aimThe contemporary electronic media is regarded as a practical tool in the dissemination of preventive measures and interventions. For this purpose an App (free of charge) was developed including an...

Detecting privacy leaks in the RATP App: how we proceeded and what we found

We analyzed the RATP App, both Android and iOS versions, using our instrumented versions of these mobile OSs. Our analysis reveals that both versions of this App leak private data to third-party servers, which is in total contradiction to the In-App privacy policy. The iOS version of this App doesn’t even respect Apple guidelines on cross-App user tracking for advertising purposes and employs various other cross-App tracking mechanisms that are not supposed to be used by Apps. Even if this work is illustrated with a single App, we describe an approach that is generic and can be used to detect privacy leaks from other Apps. In addition, our findings are representative of a trend in Advertising and Analytics (A&A) libraries that try to collect as much information as possible regarding the smartphone and its user to have a better profile of the user’s interests and behaviors. In fact, in case of iOS, these libraries even generate their own persistent identifiers and share it with other Apps through covert channels to better track the user, and this happens even if the user has opted-out of device tracking for advertising purposes. Above all, this happens without the user knowledge, and sometimes even without the App developer’s knowledge who might have naively included these libraries during the App development. Therefore this article raises many questions concerning both the bad practices employed in the world of smartphones and the limitations of the privacy control features proposed by Android/iOS Mobile OSs.

무료 Web GIS와 보급형 게임엔진을 이용한 다중플랫폼 3차원 인터랙티브 농촌경관 시뮬레이터 개발

ABSTRACT : 3D modeling and rendering technologies are getting more attention from landscape planners and architects because the virtual reality based on 3D graphic technology could give more realistic experience to landscape simulation users and boost promotional effects. The 3D landscape simulation, however, not only requires a lot of cost and time in production, but also demands efforts to distribute to consumers due to various computing environment of them. The purpose of this study is to suggest a process for developing an interactive 3D landscape simulator with low-cost, which can support multi-platform functionality in high quality through reviewing related current software and web services. We select GIMP for 2D image texturing, SketchUpfor 3D modeling, Unity for real-time rendering, and Google Earth for terrain modeling considering price and workability and apply the developed process for Windows, Web, and Android versions to test the applicability for Sangji-ri, Gosam-myeon, Gyeonggi-do, Korea.

NFC를 활용한 출결관리 시스템 구현

최근 근거리 무선통신(NFC, Near Field communication)에 대한 관심이 급증하고 있다. 이 논문에서는 출결체크시간을 최소화하기 위해서 NFC 기술을 활용한 출결관리 시스템을 제안한다. 각 강의실에는 책상마다 NFC 태그를 부착하고, 학생들은 스마트 폰에 내장되어 있는 NFC 인식기능을 이용하여 출석을 확인한다. 출결관리 시스템은 교수용 PC 웹 프로그램, 학생용 안드로이드 프로그램으로 구성되며, 학생들의 출결정보를 효율적으로 확인함으로서 교수에게 더 많은 강의시간을 제공할 수 있는 장점을 갖는다. 이 논문은 NFC를 이용한 출결관리 시스템의 프로토타입을 제안하고 구현함으로써 다양한 교육기관에서 본 시스템의 활용 가능성을 검증하는데 기여하였다. Recently, interest is rapidly increasing in short-range wireless communication such as NFC (Near Field Communication). In order to minimize the attendance time, we propose the attendance management system using the NFC tags attached in all of the desks in a classroom and NFC readers embedded in most of the smart-phones released in lately. The system consists of PC version web-application for professors and the android version app-application for students. And it provides the professors with more lecture time by saving the attendance check time. The contribution of this paper include that it proposes and develops the prototype of the attendance management system using NFC and proves that the system is applicable to the various kinds of educational organizations.

SP0181 Apps That May Help Clinical Practice in Rheumatology

I am a rheumatologist working in public and private practice without formal background in computer science but with a special interest in software applications (apps) with the potential to streamline...

Pembuatan Aplikasi Mobile Learning sebagai Sarana Pembelajaran di Lingkungan Universitas Diponegoro

Mobile learning is the intersection of Mobile Computing and E-Learning that provides the resources that can be accessed from anywhere, a powerful search system capabilities, rich interaction, full support for effective learning and assessment based on performance. E-learning has the characteristics are independent of place and time. Education requires an alternative model of learning has not characteristic depending on location and time. In addition to the proficiency level, an alternative model is also expected to provide knowledge sharing and visualization facilities of knowledge so that knowledge becomes more interesting and easy to understand. Mobile learning application built to run on android operating system. Android operating system was chosen because it has mastered the current android smartphone market and is an open source operating system that is easy to develop. Android versions that support this application is version 2.2 to 4.2. Using jQuery mobile framework allows users to access the M-Learning. Because besides its attractive, jQuery mobile display can also customize the display of the mobile device.

Breaking and fixing the Android Launching Flow

The security model of the Android OS is based on the effective combination of a number of well-known security mechanisms (e.g. statically defined permissions for applications, the isolation offered by the Dalvik Virtual Machine, and the well-known Linux discretionary access control model). Although each security mechanism has been extensively tested and proved to be effective in isolation, their combination may suffer from unexpected security flaws. We show that this is actually the case by presenting a severe vulnerability in Android related to the application launching flow. This vulnerability is based on a security flaw affecting a kernel-level socket (namely, the Zygote socket). We also present an exploit of the vulnerability that allows a malicious application to mount a severe Denial-of-Service attack that makes the Android devices become totally unresponsive. Besides explaining the vulnerability (which affects all versions of Android up to version 4.0.3) we propose two fixes. One of the two fixes has been adopted in the official release of Android, starting with version 4.1. We empirically assess the impact of the vulnerability as well as the efficacy of the countermeasures on the end user. We conclude by extending our security analysis to the whole set of sockets, showing that other sockets do not suffer from the same vulnerability as the Zygote one.

Penetration Testing for Android Smartphones

One major challenge faced by Android users today is the security of the operating system especially during setup. The use of smartphones for communication, social networking, mobile banking and payment systems have all tripled and many have depended on it for their daily transactions.AndroidOS on smartphones is so popular today that it has beaten the most popular mobile operating systems, like RIM, iOS, Windows Mobile and even Symbian, which ruled the mobile market for more than a decade.This paper performspenetration testing of Android-based Smartphones using an application program designed to simplify port-scanning techniques for information gathering and vulnerability attack. In this paper, an attempt was made to test and analyze the security architecture of the Android operating system using the latest penetration testing and vulnerability tool based on Kali Linux. Three different Versions of Android, Version 2.3, 3.2 and 4.2 were simulated on a virtual machine. The result shows that although there is an improvement in the security stack of the different AndroidVersions but Version 4.2 is more secured than the others. This work is important for users and researchers who use their Android smartphones in a critical environment with hostile network traffic.