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50 Ways to Leak Your Data: An Exploration of Apps’ Circumvention of the Android Permissions System
;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution
For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.
Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.
As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.
Smartphones are general-purpose computers that store a great deal of sensitive personal information. Apps are prevented from accessing this information at will through the use of a permission system at the operating-system level. These security mechanisms are reasonable because we carry our smartphones alongside us all day, and they can gain access to our intimate communications and social network, our web browsing history, our location at all times—even if the GPS is disabled. When apps are denied permissions, however, they still have options to cheat the permission system by using side and covert channels. In our research we found a small number of such channels being actively exploited when we tested Google Play Store apps.
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