5 papers
Don't Trust the Super-App: A Case Study of Russia's Max
Richa Priyanka, Aaron Ortwein, Joel Reardon +3
Super-apps, an emerging mobile architecture, host third-party mini-apps inside a single app, allowing users to access diverse services. A decade of security research on the super-a…
Uncovering Relationships between Android Developers, User Privacy, and Developer Willingness to Reduce Fingerprinting Risks
Alex Berke, Güliz Seray Tuncay, Michael Specter +1
The major mobile platforms, Android and iOS, have introduced changes that restrict user tracking to improve user privacy, yet apps continue to covertly track users via device finge…
Security and Privacy Analysis of Tile's Location Tracking Protocol
Akshaya Kumar, Anna Raymaker, Michael Specter
We conduct the first comprehensive security analysis of Tile, the second most popular crowd-sourced location-tracking service behind Apple's AirTags. We identify several exploitabl…
Fingerprinting SDKs for Mobile Apps and Where to Find Them: Understanding the Market for Device Fingerprinting
Michael A. Specter, Mihai Christodorescu, Abbie Farr +7
This paper presents a large-scale analysis of fingerprinting-like behavior in the mobile application ecosystem. We take a market-based approach, focusing on third-party tracking as…
Cryptographic Verifiability for Voter Registration Systems
Andrés Fábrega, Jack Cable, Michael A. Specter +1
Voter registration systems are a critical - and surprisingly understudied - element of most high-stakes elections. Despite a history of targeting by adversaries, relatively little…