Burn after reading: Expunging execution footprints of android apps

Abstract

Mobile apps nowadays are consuming and producing a mass of sensitive data. In response, a wide variety of privacy protection techniques and tools have been proposed since mobile users have the escalating privacy concerns. However, only a few privacy protection schemes consider how to thoroughly erase the runtime information of an app after its execution. Various traceable vestiges, called execution footprints, are kept by the device which could be used to steal and speculate user’s privacy. We argue that a mobile operating system should not only establish sound isolation between different apps but also need to provide a fine-grained execution footprint expunging mechanism to ensure using an app confidentially. To achieve this target, Mist, a modified Android OS, to generate fine-grained data expunging policies, is designed and implemented. Mist is a lightweight ephemeral container, which does not require the support of specialized hardware or operation mode and it will be disposed of securely when in use apps. In this container, Mist persistently tracks every message generated by the app and then it deletes them during and after the execution. Experiments based on 200 apps show that execution footprints still have been neglected by the Android OS even after the app removal. By utilizing the expunging mechanism Mist provided, those footprints are erased to guarantee a private and confidential execution.