Assessment of source data vulnerability to reproduction in Android applications

Abstract

The vast distribution of smartphone applications and the data resident on the phone (in case of offline applications) makes the data more vulnerable to theft and reproduction. This exposure of data not only affects the intellectual property but also exposes the smartphone users to spam and illegal use of private data. This paper analyzes the offline Android applications with sizable databases such as dictionaries to assess the level of security they have against data theft/reproduction. 200 dictionaries were downloaded from Google Play Store to assess the level of security they provide against data theft/reproduction. Alarmingly, it was found that most of the applications have no encryption and the data is just few clicks away from reproduction while others are encrypted but the encryption schemes are so naïve and could easily be decrypted. Only few applications were found to have robust encryption making it hard to reproduce the data.