A Comparative Study of Misapplied Crypto in Android and iOS Applications

Johannes Feichtner

2019

Abstract

Many applications for Android and iOS process sensitive data and, therefore, rely on cryptographic APIs natively provided by the operating system. For this to be effective, essential rules need to be obeyed, as otherwise the attainable level of security would be weakened or entirely defeated. In this paper, we inspect the differences between Android and iOS concerning the proper usage of platform-specific APIs for cryptography. For both platforms, we present concrete strategies to detect critical mistakes and introduce a new framework for Android that excels in pinpointing the origin of problematic security attributes. Applied on real-world apps with cryptography, we find that out of 775 investigated apps that vendors distribute for both Android and iOS, 604 apps for iOS (78%) and 538 apps for Android (69%) suffer from at least one security misconception.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Feichtner J. (2019). A Comparative Study of Misapplied Crypto in Android and iOS Applications.In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 2: SECRYPT, ISBN 978-989-758-378-0, pages 96-108. DOI: 10.5220/0007915300960108

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt19,
author={Johannes Feichtner},
title={A Comparative Study of Misapplied Crypto in Android and iOS Applications},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 2: SECRYPT,},
year={2019},
pages={96-108},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007915300960108},
isbn={978-989-758-378-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 2: SECRYPT,
TI - A Comparative Study of Misapplied Crypto in Android and iOS Applications
SN - 978-989-758-378-0
AU - Feichtner J.
PY - 2019
SP - 96
EP - 108
DO - 10.5220/0007915300960108