Protecting Security and Privacy of Smartphones/Tablets

As the smartphone/tablet industry continues to grow, so does the concern of possible malicious attacks and privacy. Statistics show that there are over 1.08 billion smartphone/tablet users in the world today and 91.4 million of them are in USA. Currently Android devices have the largest market shares. Other major competitors are Apple’s iPhone/iPad, Windows phones/tablets, and Blackberry smartphones. In this project, we plan to identify the possible security and privacy attacks to the smartphones/tablets. The obvious benefit of this study is to raise awareness among smartphone/tablet users of the potential threats that they are exposed by accessing web applications especially through apps installed in their platforms. We will further develop general defensive mechanisms and countermeasures to specific attacks in this project.