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119
Android Permissions: User Attention, Comprehension, and Behavior
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The Effectiveness of Application Permissions
- In Proc. of the USENIX Conference on Web Application Development
, 2011
"... Traditional user-based permission systems assign the user’s full privileges to all applications. Modern platforms are transitioning to a new model, in which each application has a different set of permissions based on its requirements. Application permissions offer several advantages over traditiona ..."
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Cited by 87 (13 self)
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Traditional user-based permission systems assign the user’s full privileges to all applications. Modern platforms are transitioning to a new model, in which each application has a different set of permissions based on its requirements. Application permissions offer several advantages over traditional user-based permissions, but these benefits rely on the assumption that applications generally require less than full privileges. We explore whether that assumption is realistic, which provides insight into the value of application permissions. We perform case studies on two platforms with application permissions, the Google Chrome extension system and the Android OS. We collect the permission requirements of a large set of Google Chrome extensions and Android applications. From this data, we evaluate whether application permissions are effective at protecting users. Our results indicate that application permissions can have a positive impact on system security when applications ’ permission requirements are declared upfront by the developer, but can be improved. 1
Certified lies: Detecting and defeating government interception attacks against SSL
, 2010
"... “Cryptography is typically bypassed, not ..."
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So Long, And No Thanks for the Externalities: The Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users
"... It is often suggested that users are hopelessly lazy and unmotivated on security questions. They chose weak passwords, ignore security warnings, and are oblivious to certificates errors. We argue that users ’ rejection of the security advice they receive is entirely rational from an economic perspec ..."
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Cited by 45 (1 self)
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It is often suggested that users are hopelessly lazy and unmotivated on security questions. They chose weak passwords, ignore security warnings, and are oblivious to certificates errors. We argue that users ’ rejection of the security advice they receive is entirely rational from an economic perspective. The advice offers to shield them from the direct costs of attacks, but burdens them with far greater indirect costs in the form of effort. Looking at various examples of security advice we find that the advice is complex and growing, but the benefit is largely speculative or moot. For example, much of the advice concerning passwords is outdated and does little to address actual threats, and fully 100 % of certificate error warnings appear to be false positives. Further, if users spent even a minute a day reading URLs to avoid phishing, the cost (in terms of user time) would be two orders of magnitude greater than all phishing losses. Thus we find that most security advice simply offers a poor cost-benefit tradeoff to users and is rejected. Security advice is a daily burden, applied to the whole population, while an upper bound on the benefit is the harm suffered by the fraction that become victims annually. When that fraction is small, designing security advice that is beneficial is very hard. For example, it makes little sense to burden all users with a daily task to spare 0.01 % of them a modest annual pain.
Do Windows users follow the principle of least privilege? Investigating User Account Control practices
- In SOUPS
, 2010
"... The principle of least privilege requires that users and their programs be granted the most restrictive set of privileges possible to perform required tasks in order to limit the damages caused by security incidents. Low-privileged user accounts (LUA) and user account control (UAC) in Windows Vista ..."
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Cited by 35 (2 self)
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The principle of least privilege requires that users and their programs be granted the most restrictive set of privileges possible to perform required tasks in order to limit the damages caused by security incidents. Low-privileged user accounts (LUA) and user account control (UAC) in Windows Vista and Windows 7 are two practical implementations of this principle. To be successful, however, users must apply due diligence, use appropriate accounts, and respond correctly to UAC prompts. With a user study and contextual interviews, we investigated the motives, understanding, behaviour, and challenges users face when working with user accounts and the UAC. Our results show that 69 % of participants did not apply the UAC approach correctly. All 45 participants used an administrator user account, and 91% were not aware of the benefits of low-privilege user accounts or the risks of high-privilege ones. Their knowledge and experience were limited to the restricted rights of low-privilege accounts. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations to improve the UAC and LUA approaches.
Alice in Warningland: A Large-Scale Field Study of Browser Security Warning Effectiveness
"... We empirically assess whether browser security warnings are as ineffective as suggested by popular opinion and previous literature. We used Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome’s in-browser telemetry to observe over 25 million warning impressions in situ. During our field study, users continued through ..."
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Cited by 25 (3 self)
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We empirically assess whether browser security warnings are as ineffective as suggested by popular opinion and previous literature. We used Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome’s in-browser telemetry to observe over 25 million warning impressions in situ. During our field study, users continued through a tenth of Mozilla Firefox’s malware and phishing warnings, a quarter of Google Chrome’s malware and phishing warnings, and a third of Mozilla Firefox’s SSL warnings. This demonstrates that security warnings can be effective in practice; security experts and system architects should not dismiss the goal of communicating security information to end users. We also find that user behavior varies across warnings. In contrast to the other warnings, users continued through 70.2% of Google Chrome’s SSL warnings. This indicates that the user experience of a warning can have a significant impact on user behavior. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for warning designers and researchers. 1
How to Ask For Permission
- In Proc. USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security
, 2012
"... Application platforms provide applications with access to hardware (e.g., GPS and cameras) and personal data. Modern platforms use permission systems to protect access to these resources. The nature of these permission systems vary widely across platforms. Some platforms obtain user consent as part ..."
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Cited by 24 (4 self)
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Application platforms provide applications with access to hardware (e.g., GPS and cameras) and personal data. Modern platforms use permission systems to protect access to these resources. The nature of these permission systems vary widely across platforms. Some platforms obtain user consent as part of installation, while others display runtime consent dialogs. We propose a set of guidelines to aid platform designers in determining the most appropriate permission-granting mechanism for a given permission. We apply our proposal to a smartphone platform. A preliminary evaluation indicates that our model will reduce the number of warnings presented to users, thereby reducing habituation effects. 1
SoK: SSL and HTTPS: Revisiting past challenges and evaluating certificate trust model enhancements
- IEEE SYMPOSIUM ON SECURITY AND PRIVACY
, 2013
"... Internet users today depend daily on HTTPS for secure communication with sites they intend to visit. Over the years, many attacks on HTTPS and the certificate trust model it uses have been hypothesized, executed, and/or evolved. Meanwhile the number of browser-trusted (and thus, de facto, user-trus ..."
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Cited by 22 (1 self)
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Internet users today depend daily on HTTPS for secure communication with sites they intend to visit. Over the years, many attacks on HTTPS and the certificate trust model it uses have been hypothesized, executed, and/or evolved. Meanwhile the number of browser-trusted (and thus, de facto, user-trusted) certificate authorities has proliferated, while the due diligence in baseline certificate issuance has declined. We survey and categorize prominent security issues with HTTPS and provide a systematic treatment of the history and on-going challenges, intending to provide context for future directions. We also provide a comparative evaluation of current proposals for enhancing the certificate infrastructure used in practice.
On the Challenges in Usable Security Lab Studies: Lessons Learned from Replicating a Study on SSL Warnings
"... We replicated and extended a 2008 study conducted at CMU that investigated the effectiveness of SSL warnings. We adjusted the experimental design to mitigate some of the limitations of that prior study; adjustments include allowing participants to use their web browser of choice and recruiting a mor ..."
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Cited by 20 (0 self)
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We replicated and extended a 2008 study conducted at CMU that investigated the effectiveness of SSL warnings. We adjusted the experimental design to mitigate some of the limitations of that prior study; adjustments include allowing participants to use their web browser of choice and recruiting a more representative user sample. However, during our study we observed a strong disparity between our participants actions during the laboratory tasks and their selfreported ”would be ” actions during similar tasks in everyday computer practices. Our participants attributed this disparity to the laboratory environment and the security it offered. In this paper we discuss our results and how the introduced changes to the initial study design may have affected them. Also, we discuss the challenges of observing natural behavior in a study environment, as well as the challenges of replicating previous studies given the rapid changes in web technology. We also propose alternatives to traditional laboratory study methodologies that can be considered by the usable security research community when investigating research questions involving sensitive data where trust may influence behavior. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.4 [Information Systems Applications]: Miscellaneous; D.2.8 [Software Engineering]: Metrics—complexity measures,
Browser Interfaces and Extended Validation SSL Certificates: An Empirical Study
"... There has been a loss of confidence in the security provided by SSL certificates and browser interfaces in the face of various attacks. As one response, basic SSL server certificates are being demoted to second-class status in conjunction with the introduction of Extended Validation (EV) SSL certifi ..."
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Cited by 19 (2 self)
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There has been a loss of confidence in the security provided by SSL certificates and browser interfaces in the face of various attacks. As one response, basic SSL server certificates are being demoted to second-class status in conjunction with the introduction of Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates. Unfortunately, EV SSL certificates may complicate the already difficult design challenge of effectively conveying certificate information to the average user. This study explores the interfaces related to SSL certificates in the most widely deployed browser (Internet Explorer 7), proposes an alternative set of interface dialogs, and compares their effectiveness through a user study involving 40 participants. The alternative interface was found to offer statistically significant improvements in confidence, ease of finding information, and ease of understanding. Such results from a modest re-design effort suggest considerable room for improvement in the user interfaces of browsers today. This work motivates further study of whether EV SSL certificates offer a robust foundation for improving Internet trust, or a further compromise to usable security for ordinary users.
