Carleton University - School of Computer Science Honours Project
Winter 2017
Permission Explorer
Jason Liu
SCS Honours Project Image
ABSTRACT
The boom in mobile apps that have surfaced from the release of the first smartphones are in the millions and growing rapidly. The reasoning behind the popularity of certain apps can be associated with the amount of useful functions that the app provides to the user. However, to provide these useful functions, apps have the need to access certain components in your mobile devices such as Camera, GPS, internet connectivity, etc. The purpose of this project is to discover the security issues that could come with accepting permissions and show what exactly apps have access to when permissions are granted. Further, I will be adding in “features” that will simulate a handful of questionable security integrity cases that developers have access to when you authorize certain permissions. The main components of this project will be integrated into an open source app found on the Google Playstore called Permission Explorer made by Carlo Criniti, which will need some updating to work with the newer Android 7.1. This application is implemented using Java, an SQL database, and XML for the GUI which is conveniently packed into an SDK called Android Studio made by Google.