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Detecting Camouflaged Applications on Mobile Application Markets

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Information Security and Cryptology - ICISC 2014 (ICISC 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 8949))

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Abstract

Application plagiarism or application cloning is an emerging threat in mobile application markets. It reduces profits of original developers and sometimes even harms the security and privacy of users. In this paper, we introduce a new concept, called camouflaged applications, where external features of mobile applications, such as icons, screenshots, application names or descriptions, are copied. We then propose a scalable detection framework, which can find these suspiciously similar camouflaged applications. To accomplish this, we apply text-based retrieval methods and content-based image retrieval methods in our framework. Our framework is implemented and tested with 30,625 Android applications from the official Google Play market. The experiment results show that even the official market is comprised of 477 potential camouflaged victims, which cover 1.56 % of tested samples. Our paper highlights that these camouflaged applications not only expose potential security threats but also degrade qualities of mobile application markets. Our paper also analyze the behaviors of detected camouflaged applications and calculate the false alarm rates of the proposed framework.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/08/google-play-cracks-down-on-confusingly-similar-apps/.

  2. 2.

    http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Android/Infinity+Blade+II/news.asp?c=43572.

  3. 3.

    http://m.androidcentral.com/temple-run-android-still-isnt-out-anything-else-just-malware.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Singapore, Singapore

    Su Mon Kywe, Yingjiu Li & Robert H. Deng

  2. Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

    Jason Hong

Authors
  1. Su Mon Kywe
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  2. Yingjiu Li
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  3. Robert H. Deng
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  4. Jason Hong
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Su Mon Kywe .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sejong University, Seoul, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Jooyoung Lee

  2. Kookmin University, Seoul, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Jongsung Kim

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Kywe, S.M., Li, Y., Deng, R.H., Hong, J. (2015). Detecting Camouflaged Applications on Mobile Application Markets. In: Lee, J., Kim, J. (eds) Information Security and Cryptology - ICISC 2014. ICISC 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8949. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15943-0_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15943-0_15

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15943-0

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