Enhancing security of Android & IOS by implementing need-based security (NBS)

Abstract

The most popular Smartphone platforms i.e. Android and iOS are equipped with the built-in security features to safeguard their end users. Android, being an Open Source Mobile Operating System, has some security vulnerabilities. Such limitations are also present in iOS which is a proprietary platform with some open source components. In this paper we will compare in detail the security features of Android and iOS, with the intent to integrate the need based security (NBS) model in Android which selectively grants permission to access resources on a Smartphone at run time. This paper proposes the implementation of a reverse engineering process which restricts an app's permissions and provides a need based mechanism to access resources. The repackaged app with need based security will run on all devices that were supported by the original application.