<p dir="ltr">To assess the security of mobile devices, I begin by identifying the key entities involved in their operation: the user, the mobile device, and the service or device being accessed. Users rely on mobile devices to interact with services and perform essential tasks. These devices act as gateways, enabling communication between the user and the back-end services. For example, a user may access their bank account via a banking app on their mobile device, which communicates with the bank’s back-end server. In such scenarios, the server must authenticate the user to ensure only authorized individuals can access sensitive information. However, beyond user authentication, it is crucial for connected services and devices to verify the integrity of the mobile device itself. A compromised mobile device can have severe consequences for both the user and the services involved.</p><p dir="ltr">My research focuses on examining the methods used by various entities to attest and verify the integrity of mobile devices. I conduct a comprehensive analysis of mobile device attestation from multiple perspectives. Specifically, I investigate how attestation is carried out by back-end servers of mobile apps, IoT devices controlled by mobile companion apps, and large language models (LLMs) accessed via mobile apps.</p><p dir="ltr">In the first case, back-end servers of mobile apps must attest to the integrity of the device to protect against tampered apps and devices, which could lead to financial loss, data breaches, or intellectual property theft. For instance, a music streaming service must implement strong security measures to verify the device’s integrity before transmitting sensitive content to prevent data leakage or unauthorized access.</p><p dir="ltr">In the second case, IoT devices must ensure they are communicating with legitimate companion apps running on attested mobile devices. Failure to enforce proper attestation for IoT companion apps can expose these devices to malicious attacks. An attacker could inject malicious code into an IoT device, potentially causing physical damage to the device or its surroundings, or even seizing control of the device, leading to critical safety risks, property damage, or harm to human lives.</p><p dir="ltr">Finally, in the third case, malicious apps can exploit prompt injection attacks against LLMs, leading to data leaks or unauthorized access to APIs and services offered by the LLM. These scenarios underscore the importance of secure and attested communication between mobile devices and the services they interact with.</p>

Mobile applications are growing in popularity and pose new problems in the area of software testing. In particular, mobile applications heavily depend upon user interactions and a dynamically changing environment of system events. In this thesis, we focus on user-driven events and use Q-learning, a reinforcement machine learning algorithm, to generate tests for Android applications under test (AUT). We implement a framework that automates the generation of GUI test cases by using our Q-learning approach and compare it to a uniform random (UR) implementation. A novel feature of our approach is that we generate user-driven event sequences through the GUI, without the source code or the model of the AUT. Hence, considerable amount of cost and time are saved by avoiding the need for model generation for generating the tests. Our results show that the systematic path exploration used by Q-learning results in higher average code coverage in comparison to the uniform random approach.

Mobile applications play an important role in the dissemination of computing and information resources. They are often used in domains such as mobile banking, e-commerce, and health monitoring. Cost-effective testing techniques in these domains are critical. This dissertation contributes novel techniques for automatic construction of mobile application test suites. In particular, this work provides solutions that focus on the prohibitively large number of possible event sequences that must be sampled in GUI-based mobile applications. This work makes three major contributions: (1) an automated GUI testing tool, Autodroid, that implements a novel online approach to automatic construction of Android application test suites (2) probabilistic and combinatorial-based algorithms that systematically sample the input space of Android applications to generate test suites with GUI/context events and (3) empirical studies to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of our techniques on real-world Android applications. Our experiments show that our techniques achieve better code coverage and event coverage compared to random test generation. We demonstrate that our techniques are useful for automatic construction of Android application test suites in the absence of source code and preexisting abstract models of an Application Under Test (AUT). The insights derived from our empirical studies provide guidance to researchers and practitioners involved in the development of automated GUI testing tools for Android applications.

The work is devoted to the development and management of the development of a mobile application for supporting HIV+ children, including telemedicine functions and developing medication administration skills. The approaches and methods of development for the Android OS, such as application architecture, technology stack, are considered. Solutions are provided in the field of code quality assurance, testing and delivery automation, application support and team management, which allow achieving the goal of the work - creating and implementing the required product. / Работа посвящена разработке и управлению разработкой мобильного приложения для сопровождения ВИЧ+ детей, включающего в себя функции телемедицины и выработки навыков приема медикаментов. Рассматриваются подходы и методы разработки для ОС Android, такие как архитектура приложений, стек технологий. Приводятся решения в области обеспечения качества кода, автоматизации тестирования и поставки, поддержки приложения и управления командой, которые позволяют достичь цели работы – создания и внедрения требуемого продукта.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Mitchell L. Neilsen / The mobile world is rapidly changing: Smartphones have gone from portable messaging and email devices to streaming-video machines that surf the Web at blazing speed. Now-a-days a smartphone can provide computing capabilities, wireless communication capabilities, run software and perform other tasks just like any traditional computer. These amazing features of a smartphone and Open Source Android market helped in the development of this project. The purpose of this project is to develop an Android application for controlling various elements of user environment. User Controlled Environment is an Android application for home. The environment consists of smart lights, an Android mobile devices for playing music and a display. The application sends the user’s preferred settings to the environment and the respective settings are applied. The preferences are displayed on the screen. The user will be able to view and adjust a variety of environmental preferences. The preferences include the light’s color, light intensity, and the music. When the user exits the application the environment goes to a default state. The users can set preferences which include moods, seven colors of light, three levels of light intensity and songs that the users can select.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel Andresen / This report considers a native Android application called “KSUSoy YieldCalc” that assists in yield estimation of soybean before harvest following conventional approach. Android is one of the most popular installed base of any mobile platform, powering many mobile devices in more than 190 countries for users of diverse economic backgrounds, making it more popular than iOS devices (Android developers n.d.).The project “KSUSoy YieldCalc” adopted the Android platform as its base to serve farmers, agronomists, and consultants and deliver performance to save time and enhance farmers’ their confidence. The native application uses “conventional approach” of estimation of yield for calculations and eliminates the need for having Internet connection to access, thereby increasing the application’s flexibility. The project utilized Android Software Development Kit (SDK) as its development platform with extensive Java and Extensible Markup Language (XML) coding. The Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University (KSU) tested the application with promising results. Dr. Ignacio Ciampitti of the Department of Agronomy at KSU currently demonstrates the application to farmers. User feedback has been very satisfactory to date.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel A. Andresen / Present times most of the applications allow users to set profiles and activate them manually. Also, there is no such application to alert the calling person automatically whenever we are busy in a meeting. Auto Profile is an application which addresses these issues. Using this application, a custom profile can be created and activated. The user of this application can create any number of custom profiles with their own timings depending on their requirements from the available set of ringer modes such as vibration, silent, normal modes. All these settings will be changed automatically when they define a profile and set it as active. Every profile can be scheduled according to their wish. Also, users can define how often and how long they would like to activate the selected profile. Auto Profile Switcher will recognize their profile based on the current time and it will apply the right profile at the right time according to the given settings. For instance, they can save a home profile and a work profile, and the application will automatically switch from one to other automatically, without any user action. It's also possible for the users to apply manually saved profile wherever they are. Also, the application allows users not to bother about the calls from important persons when they are in some important meeting or busy. Automatically profile is activated as scheduled and sends a respective alert to the caller according to the profile activated. Auto Profile application is user-friendly and easy to use. The proposed application is developed for the android platform, which is used to create custom profiles and make sure that the tasks are executed as scheduled. This relieves users as they do not need to bother about the calls when they are in some important meeting or busy. As this is a mobile application users can easily organize their action wherever they are with ease.

Poverty and long distances are two reasons why some people in the third world countries hasdifficulties seeking medical help. A solution to the long distances could be if the medical carewas more mobile and diagnostically tests could be performed on site in villages. A new pointof-care test based on a small blood shows promising results both in run time and mobility.However, the method still needs more advanced equipment for analysis of the resultingmicroarray. This study has investigated the potential to perform the analysis within asmartphone application, performing all steps from image capturing to a diagnostic result. Theproject was approach in two steps, starting with implementation and selection of imageanalysis methods and finishing with implementing those results into an Android application.A final application was not developed, but the results gained from this project indicates that asmartphone processing power is enough to perform heavy image analysis within a sufficientamount of time. It also imply that the resolution in the evaluated images taken with a Nexus 6together with an external macro lens most likely is enough for the whole analysis, but furtherwork must be done to ensure it.

The aim of this project is to develop an application with the purpose to help students procrastinate less and plan their studies. Cellphones are a common distraction among students today and many people find procrastination on cellphones to be a major problem. The purpose of the application is to prevent procrastination and stress by turning off distractive apps during a study session as well as offering the user help in planning upcoming deadlines and examinations. The application HappyHelper provides the user features such as blocking distracting application during a certain amount of time and a calendar for organizing studies; consequently, the aim of the project is achieved. To determine whether the purpose is fulfilled or not a user survey is required and is scheduled to be executed in the near future. / Målet med detta projekt är att utveckla en applikation med syfte att hjälpa studenter prokrastinera mindre och planera sina studier. Att distraheras av mobiltelefonen är ett vanligt problem bland studenter idag och många ser prokrastineringen med en mobiltelefon som ett allvarligt bekymmer. Applikationens syfte är att motverka prokrastinering och stress genom att stänga av distraherande appar under en studiesession och erbjuda användaren att planera in arbeten och examinationer. Applikationen HappyHelper erbjuder användaren att under en tidsinställd period blockera distraherande applikationer och en kalenderfunktion för att planera in sina studier; projektet uppnår därmed sitt mål. För att avgöra huruvida syftet är uppfyllt eller inte, krävs en användarundersökning som är planerad att genomföras in en snar framtid.

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία πραγματεύεται ένα παιχνίδι πολλών παικτών που παίζεται με συσκευές Android στην πόλη της Πάτρας. Το όνομα του παιχνιδιού είναι "Αόρατη Πόλη". / This thesis describes the development of a multiplayer game in android platform played in the city of Patras. The name of the game is "Invisible City".