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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Carlton Shepherd
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Mobile devices often distribute measurements from physical sensors to multiple applications using software multiplexing. On Android devices, the highest requested sampling frequency is returned to all applications, even if others request measurements at lower frequencies. In this paper, we comprehensively demonstrate that this design choice exposes practically exploitable side-channels using frequency-key shifting. By carefully modulating sensor sampling frequencies in software, we show how unprivileged malicious applications can construct reliable spectral covert channels that bypass existing security mechanisms. Additionally, we present a novel variant that allows an unprivileged malicious application to profile other active, sensor-enabled applications at a coarse-grained level. Both methods do not impose any special assumptions beyond accessing standard mobile services available to developers. As such, our work reports side-channel vulnerabilities that exploit subtle yet insecure design choices in Android sensor stacks.
Author(s): Shepherd C, Kalbantner J, Semal B, Markantonakis K
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
Year: 2023
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 11/10/2023
Acceptance date: 08/10/2023
Date deposited: 22/10/2023
ISSN (print): 1545-5971
ISSN (electronic): 1941-0018
Publisher: IEEE
URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2023.3323732
DOI: 10.1109/TDSC.2023.3323732
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/qrxq-qt14
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