ScreenStealer: Addressing Screenshot attacks on Android devices

Abstract

Smartphones are ubiquitous in today's world. With the enhanced and advanced functionalities, smartphones carry a large amount of user's private and confidential data. There are numerous risks, threats, and the rise in powerfulness and effectiveness of malware attacks make smartphones more prone and vulnerable. Due to the rapid increase in Android smartphones users, demands based on new and advanced features as well as the usage ease have been lavished on developers. The Android application developers are working hard to develop innovative applications for millions of Android users around the world. In this struggle of advancement, they are seeking permissions to critical system resources, not directly offered by Android. One of the most projecting way is through ADB (Android Debug Bridge) that has been granted permissions to use critical system resources. There are many applications on Google Play Store that utilize ADB proxy to provide users with unconventional and smart features on smartphones. This paper reviews the ADB capabilities and how Internet access and ADB together allow applications to expose sensitive data of an Android smartphone device. Furthermore, a malicious Android application, `ScreenStealer', has been developed and its effects on Android-based smartphones are studied.