Reliability Issues among Android Components: Analysis, Testing and Solutions

Reliability is one of the aspects at the core of every operating system for its impact on the user experience. We explore the current status of the reliability in the interactions among Android applications components, uncovering a number of flaws that can heavily harm a high number of devices running the latest version of this OS. We develop an automatic detection and evaluation toolset able to classify applications according to their subjection to the discovered flaws. We also demonstrate how attackers can practically implement a DoS attack able to harm a device in a real-life scenario, and we propose suitable solutions aimed to mitigate the malicious effects of such attacks.