Implementation of slow droid: Slow DoS attack performed by a smartphone

Abstract

In terms of capabilities, today's smartphones are comparable to desktop computers. Last generation cellphones are indeed able to execute almost all the operation a common computer is able to accomplish. In this paper we focus on the use of mobile devices for perpetrating cyber attacks. With the purpose of proving the ability of executing attacks from a mobile environment, we introduce a mobile threat, SlowDroid, running on Android devices. SlowDroid implements a Denial of Service attack. Since it makes use of tiny amounts of resources, it is particularly accustomed to a mobile environment. We exhaustively present SlowDroid implementation and choices in terms of design, user interface and system architecture.