Security in Mobile Computing

These days, peoples expected to move around carrying their mobile devices, talking to friends, completing their work, accessing emails etc. His/her pictures, work, study, even relationship (friends, and family) all is in the mobile device. Therefore, mobile devices (especially smart phones) become an ideal target for different attacks. Mobile computing also becomes important in enterprises and organizations. Therefore, it is important to illustrate the state of art on vulnerabilities and threats on mobile device. This chapter is addressed to explain mobile computing concept, features, architecture, operating systems, and risks to mobile devices. Mobile operating system structureand characteristicsare demonstrated. The author also illustrates mobile security issues, and type of threats to mobile devices. Finally, features and security models of two popular smartphone operating systems, Android and iOS, are illustrated. It was found that the security models of these two smartphones is immature and do not meet the enterprises security policies.

Security issues of Symbian-based mobile computing devices such as PDAs and smart phones are surveyed. The evolution of Symbian OS architecture is outlined. Security threats and problems in mobile computing are analyzed. Theft/loss of the mobile device or removable memory cards exposes stored sensitive information. Wireless connection vulnerabilities are exploited for unauthorized access to mobile devices, to network, and to network service. Malicious software attacks in form of Trojan horses, viruses, and worms are also becoming more common The Symbian OS is open for external software and content which makes Symbian devices vulnerable for hostile applications. Embedded security features in Symbian OS are: a cryptographic software module, verification procedures for PKI signed software installation files, and support for the communication security protocols IPSec and TLS. The newest version 9.3 of Symbian also embeds a platform security structure with layered trusted computing, protection capabilities for installed software, and data caging for integrity and confidentiality of private data. Fundamental security requirements of a Symbian based mobile device such as physical protection, device access control, storage protection, network access control, network service access control, and network connection security are described in detail. Symbian security is also evaluated by discussing its weaknesses and by comparing it to other mobile operating systems. Current availability of add-on security software for Symbian based mobile devices is outlined in an appendix. In another appendix, measurement results on how add-on security software degrades network communication performance of a Symbian based mobile device are presented and analyzed as a case study.

This chapter introduces the enormous impact of mobile computing on both companies and individuals. Companies face many issues related to mobile computing. For example: which devices will be supported by the organization? which devices will fulfill the business objectives? which form factor will win? which features and networks will future devices offer? which operating systems will they run? what will all this cost? what are the security issues involved? what are the business drivers? This chapter will discuss the major business drivers in the mobile computing field, and provide an analysis of the top two operating systems that are currently running the majority of mobile devices. These platforms are the 1) Palm operating system (OS), and 2) Microsoft Windows CE operating system. The chapter will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each operating system and discuss market share and future growth.

The value of a mobile communication device is its ability to organize and access important information quickly. Mobile devices are often associated with the cutting-edge technology of the last 4 years. Although having gained an increasing popularity over recent years, mobile devices have a history of 15 years. The first generation of mobile devices was the analog mobile phone. They were large and cumbersome, resembling a small briefcase. With the launch of the second generation, mobile phone units became smaller and easier to handle. Currently, third-generation phones are starting to be released, advancing in design and dynamic capabilities. By the year 2005, 76% of consumers will own an Internet compatible device, 66% will own a cell phone, 45% will own an Internet cell phone, and 10% will own a personal digitial assistant (Forrester, 2001). In today's information surge, business never stops. IDC Research has forecasted that an average of more than 36 billion person-to-person e-mails will be sent daily by 2005 (Juptner, 2001). Hence, mobile communication plays a major role in the success of most of today's business operations (Jones, 2001), and all businesses are continually faced with the challenge of engaging with the rapidly changing information technology age. One area of mobile communications that has been growing exponentially is mobile computing. Keywords: code division multiple access (CDMA); general packet radio service (GPRS); global positioning system (GPS); Internet cell phone; mobile communication device; personal digital assistant (PDA)

Recently, smart phones such as the Galaxy S and IPhone, and tablet PCs such as the Galaxy Tab have been introduced and become widespread in the market, thus the environment for wireless Internet services has been improving. As the market has improved, consumer preferences for mobile devices and the relationship between these devices and wireless Internet services regarding consumer preferences have become a very important issue. However, although there have been a considerable number of studies on the demand for mobile devices, it is not easy to find previous studies on the relationship between consumer preferences for specific attributes of wireless Internet services and the demand for mobile devices. The main purpose of this study is to analyze which mobile device is more likely to be preferred or become the main channel for wireless Internet services and how the demand for each mobile device is influenced by consumer preferences for specific attributes of wireless broadband Internet services used on it, and to induce managerial implications based on the main findings. To derive the results on consumer preferences, conjoint analysis is used. The survey was conducted using 1,000 Korean consumers. In the survey, respondents are allowed to choose more than one hypothetical alternative representing a mobile device combined with a certain type of wireless broadband Internet service if they desired. To estimate the consumer preferences quantitatively, a multivariate probit model is used. According to the estimation results, owing to their portability, smart phones are more likely to become a major channel for wireless Internet services despite their drawbacks in terms of display size and performance. Portability is the most important factor affecting the choice of a mobile device when using wireless Internet services. Therefore, manufacturers of mobile devices for wireless Internet services should improve the overall functionality and performances of mobile devices without negatively affecting portability. However, at the same time, consumer preferences for specific attributes of wireless Internet services are found to affect the demand of each mobile device much differently. Therefore, the prediction that smart phones will be the prevalent mobile device for use of wireless Internet services can be somewhat changed, depending on which and how wireless Internet services are provided to each mobile device and how they affect the demand for each mobile device. As mentioned above, there are significant differences between mobile devices with regard to the effects of mobility, data transfer speed, type of contents or Internet interface for wireless Internet services. It is found that the mobility of wireless Internet service is highly valued for smaller devices, but not much for notebook PCs. In contrast, data transfer speed and similarities in the type of contents or Internet interface to those provided by fixed broadband Internet services become more important for larger mobile devices. Thus, it is necessary for wireless Internet service providers to differentiate and optimize their contents and Internet interfaces properly for various mobile devices. Additionally, it is reasonable that manufacturers of smart phones focus on mobility and portability (or convenience) rather than adding sophisticated functions or pursuing higher-level specifications. Further, for smart phones, for which mobility and convenience are important, wireless Internet service providers should develop and provide easy and convenient programs, rather than advanced programs that require high device performance. Lastly, with respect to individual demographics, young and highly educated people are more likely to be consumers of newly introduced mobile devices for using wireless Internet services. Therefore, these young and highly educated consumers should be considered a major target for manufacturers of mobile devices for wireless Internet services.

Mobile computing has the potential to enable a large class of applications, such as smart phone, mobile internet, mobile game and mobile multimedia, etc. However, as a high-tech, it is also a high-energy-consuming one. Sustainable mobile computing with the aiming of energy costs and CO2 emissions’ reducing, and environment protecting, has become a potential research focus for all the next-generation communications’ and networks’ designers. In spite of the increasing demand for all kinds of mobile computing services, we are still lacking a clear understanding of sustainable mobile computing and techniques, as well as best practices, to design energy-efficient, utility, pervasive, scalable, autonomy-oriented mobile computing and applications. The objective of this special issue is to bring together state-of-the-art research contributions that address these key aspects of sustainability in mobile computing and applications. There were nine papers submitted for consideration for publication in this special issue. After two rounds of rigorous peer-review and revision processes, only three papers were selected for publication. Unfortunately not all of the excellent papers can be selected into this special issue due to limited space available. And we believe that these papers included in this special issue represent the outstanding quality of the research outcomes in this field. The first paper, “Energy-efficient Job Stealing for CPU-intensive processing in Mobile Devices”, by Juan Manuel Rodriguez, Cristian Mateos, and Alejandro Zunino, explores an analysis of different schedulers based on job stealing for mobile

The value of a mobile communication device is its ability to organize and access important information quickly. Mobile devices are often associated with the cutting‐edge technology of the last 4 years. Although having gained an increasing popularity over recent years, mobile devices have a history of 15 years. The first generation of mobile devices was the analog mobile phone. They were large and cumbersome, resembling a small briefcase. With the launch of the second generation, mobile phone units became smaller and easier to handle. Currently, third‐generation phones are starting to be released, advancing in design and dynamic capabilities. By the year 2005, 76% of consumers will own an Internet compatible device, 66% will own a cell phone, 45% will own an Internet cell phone, and 10% will own a personal digitial assistant (Forrester, ). In today's information surge, business never stops. IDC Research has forecasted that an average of more than 36 billion person‐to‐person e‐mails will be sent daily by 2005 (Juptner, ). Hence, mobile communication plays a major role in the success of most of today's business operations (Jones, ), and all businesses are continually faced with the challenge of engaging with the rapidly changing information technology age. One area of mobile communications that has been growing exponentially is mobile computing.

Battery driven computing devices such as laptops and cellular phones have become a necessity in this era. Mobile applications help us in daily life activities and with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) new opportunities are open up to automate different task. However, batteries have their own limitations such as weight, cost, and size. Multiple applications and background processes running in parallel easily drain phone’s battery within 24 hours consequently annoying users by limited battery capacity. Repeated charge, recharge cycles steadily diminish the full capacity of batteries resulting in the immense decreased performance of the device. Therefore, mobile devices and mobile applications are in great need of energy-aware modules. In this paper, a survey is performed to identify the needs of the mobile user in the context of energy consumption problem. The results of survey lead authors to propose a middle layer energy aware framework to address this issue. The proposed framework highly relies on the association between the operating system, application, and end user. The main objective of the proposed framework is to maintain an energy-aware capability to facilitate end user and mobile applications. The major components of the proposed framework are processing engine, application classifier, application resource management, system profiling, application modes, power estimator and power policy management. Proposed framework also offers a policy manager algorithm based on research community feedback and survey's results. Proposed framework emphasizes on energy efficient execution of mobile operations for end user and operating systems.

There are numerous initiatives to use mobile devices as so-called “trusted pocket signers” to produce electronic signatures. The actual signature is generated by means of a conventional signature card. The mobile device serves as the card reader, storage device for the document to be signed and as a display for the signature application. The operating system used on the mobile device has thus a pivotal importance to ensure the integrity and accountability of the electronic signature. Also mobile devices are used to provide mobile workers with access to the corporate backend. We examined the currently available mobile operating systems in regard to their security and conclude that not a single one is secure enough for "trusted" signing and only partially for secure backend access. We show two possible ways of how to make mobile devices more secure and possibly to enable something close to “what you see is what you sign”.Key wordsMobile Operating SystemsTrusted Devices

Mobile security is more and more important with the fast growth of mobile devices, and people are becoming more dependent on mobile devices in their daily life. Malicious samples in mobile devices are growing in double times each year from 2011 to 2017 in China. ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards helps organizations keep information assets secure, such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted to you by third parties. ISO/IEC 27001 is the best-known standard in the family providing requirements for an information security management system (ISMS). However, ISO/IEC 27001 is not quite adaptable for mobile devices, because these developing mobile information devices lead to new challenges and security risks. This paper analyzes mobile devices security issues, and gives the drawback for 27001 in mobile security. Finally, this paper gives a consideration to these issues under ISO/IEC 27001 information security management system framework.

Grid computing using wireless networks is receiving increasing attention and is expected to become a critical part of future grid computing. However, the inherent challenges of mobile environments such as mobility management, disconnected operation, device heterogeneity, service discovery, and resource sharing are significant issues in mobile grid computing. To achieve the best performance in a mobile grid computing environment, the mobile devices with the lowest probability of mobility should be selected for use first. We therefore focus on the idle state of mobile devices and use IP-paging scheme to identify the idle mobile devices. For this, we propose a user-defined checkpoint technique for task migration, which is based on the information of when a mobile device will leave the network or stop due to low battery. Our checkpoint technique performs checkpoints by two conditions: when a mobile device leaves its current cell and when it turns off due to low battery capacity.KeywordsMobile GridIP-PagingTask MigrationCheckpoints

In this chapter, various aspects pertaining to the open operating system Android OS such as its history, architecture, features, and utility for business purposes will be introduced, following which the role of Android in enterprise management will be explained. The chapter will be concluded by a detailed report of the BYOD approach that uses Android for industrial control and automation. Since mobile devices have become progressively more powerful and accessible, mobile computing has greatly changed our daily lives. As one of the most popular mobile operating systems, Android provides the tools and API for Android developers to develop Android applications. Android is an open source operating system for mobile devices. Today its primary use is lodged in the mobile phone industry. During the recent past years, many projects have been created, with the objective to elevate Android to other platforms, such as sub-notebooks or embedded systems.

As mobile devices and applications continue to grow in popularity worldwide, so do the rise of cybersecurity attacks and threats to daily users of both Android and iOS devices on a widespread basis. These attacks not only target mobile devices at the application level but also at the Operating System (OS) device level and Application Programming Interface (API) level extending the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper will address the security vulnerabilities in Android Operating System at the intersection of APIs, device OS, and application-level vulnerabilities by identifying an intersection of commonalities to create mitigation strategies and best practices for securing mobile devices for organizations. The study recommends the adoption of processes of authentication on mobile devices and web-based log-ins as well as access control mechanisms that can mitigate the overlapping security challenges of APIs, mobile devices OS and applications using optimal resources to enhance security. This was achieved by analyzing the threats and vulnerabilities of API.KeywordsAPIsSecurity vulnerabilitiesMobile OSAndroidiOS

In recent years, mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets empowered with tremendous technological advancements.Augmenting the computing capability to the distant cloud help us to envision a new computing era named as mobile cloud computing (MCC).However, distant cloud has several limitations such as communication delay and bandwidth which brings the idea of proximate cloud of cloudlet.Cloudlet has distinct advantages and is free from several limitations of distant cloud.However, limited resources of cloudlet negatively impact the cloudlet performance with the increasing number of substantial users.Hence, cloudlet is a viable solution to augment the mobile device task to the nearest small scale cloud known as cloudlet.However, this cloudlet resource is finite which in some point appear as resource scarcity problem.In this paper, we analyse the cloudlet resource scarcity problem on overall performance in the cloudlet for mobile cloud computing.In addition, for empirical analysis, we make some definitions, assumptions and research boundaries.Moreover, we experimentally examine the finite resource impact on cloudlet overall performance.By, empirical analysis, we explicitly establish the research gap and present cloudlet finite resource problem in mobile cloud computing.In this paper, we propose a Performance Enhancement Framework of Cloudlet (PEFC) which enhances the finite resource cloudlet performance.Our aim is to increase the cloudlet performance with this limited cloudlet resource and make the better user experience for the cloudlet user in mobile cloud computing.

MCC, or mobile cloud computing, is a new field. Mobile cloud computing is becoming a crucial component for mobile devices due to reliability and portability as data processing and storage take place outside of the mobile due to the widespread use of mobile devices and the variety of apps. It helps mobile devices conserve battery life and processing power, which is important for highpower mobile devices. Mobile cloud computing offers consumers to make calculations and use cloud services on their mobile devices. It is essential to gain a full understanding of current models and emerging trends because mobile Cloud computing is still in its infancy. The purpose of this survey is to identify and describe the main risks and obstacles associated with mobile cloud computing while alsoshowcasing emerging trends in this area.