The Snowden Phone: A Comparative Survey of Secure Instant Messaging Mobile Applications

Johansen, Christian; Mujaj, Aulon; Arshad, Hamed; Noll, Josef

doi:10.1155/2021/9965573

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Security of Messengers: A systematization of knowledge by Unger et al [52] provides an extensive overview of security features in many instant messaging applications. Similarly, also other studies have analyzed security features of specific subsets of messengers and their cryptographic foundations [1], [20], [21], protocols [9], [17], [24], [42], or exploited specific features such as contact discovery to crawl millions of American phone numbers [19].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hope of Delivery: Extracting User Locations From Mobile Instant Messengers

Schnitzler¹,

Kohls²,

Bitsikas³

et al. 2023

Proceedings 2023 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium

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Mobile instant messengers such as WhatsApp use delivery status notifications in order to inform users if a sent message has successfully reached its destination. This is useful and important information for the sender due to the often asynchronous use of the messenger service. However, as we demonstrate in this paper, this standard feature opens up a timing side channel with unexpected consequences for user location privacy. We investigate this threat conceptually and experimentally for three widely spread instant messengers. We validate that this information leak even exists in privacy-friendly messengers such as Signal and Threema.Our results show that, after a training phase, a messenger user can distinguish different locations of the message receiver. Our analyses involving multiple rounds of measurements and evaluations show that the timing side channel persists independent of distances between receiver locations -the attack works both for receivers in different countries as well as at small scale in one city. For instance, out of three locations within the same city, the sender can determine the correct one with more than 80 % accuracy. Thus, messenger users can secretly spy on each others' whereabouts when sending instant messages. As our countermeasure evaluation shows, messenger providers could effectively disable the timing side channel by randomly delaying delivery confirmations within the range of a few seconds. For users themselves, the threat is harder to prevent since there is no option to turn off delivery confirmations.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hope of Delivery: Extracting User Locations From Mobile Instant Messengers

Schnitzler¹,

Kohls²,

Bitsikas³

et al. 2023

Proceedings 2023 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium

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show abstract

“…Some studies advised that, given that communications travel through insecure channels, IM apps should secure their transmissions (preferably, with end‐to‐end encryption) and user‐generated data [24, 43, 44], along with local encrypted databases [45], as a way to protect the app from unauthorised (either physical or logical) access to the device. It has been detected a lack of user awareness on mobile security, and it cannot be comparable to current computer awareness [46].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying usability recommendations when developing mobile instant messaging applications

et al. 2021

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Mobile Instant Messaging applications noted a growing number of active users recently. Although having millions of users, the previous research results have shown usability flaws in this type of mobile applications. Difficulties when performing tasks, poor design of user interfaces, or lack of information about privacy and security methods were some of the identified flaws. Consequently, a collection of usability recommendations was proposed. The goal of these recommendations is to improve the experience in the use of these mobile applications and, thus, enhancing the usability of this kind of apps. These recommendations were taken into account during the development process of a new instant messaging application. Thus, in this study, the authors present the resulting application, its characteristics, how usability recommendations were covered through design and development phases, and a preliminary usability evaluation performed by conducting two research methods: KLM and Mobile Heuristic Evaluation. Both methods ranked the prototype at top positions (i.e. good usability results) when compared with the results obtained in previous studies about other existing instant messaging applications. K E Y W O R D Shuman computer interaction, mobile applications, software usability, usability evaluation methods, user interfaces | INTRODUCTIONNowadays, mobile devices have obtained the consideration of being essential tools for almost all people [1]. It should be borne in mind that they are the most used electronic devices [2], with more than 3 billion smartphones [3]. Along with the use of mobile phones, mobile applications (thereafter called, simply, ''apps'') are experiencing an exponential growth in their usage: Between 2009 and 2020, an increase in the number of available mobile apps was reported from 16 thousand apps to 2.9 million apps in Google Play Store and from 25 thousand apps to 1.8 million apps in Apple Apps Store [4][5][6].One type of mobile applications with a growing usage is Mobile Instant Messaging apps (namely, MIM or IM apps), with a high number of active users [7,8], as an evolution of SMS messages [9] and as an improvement of social relationships [10].Nevertheless, when we put together and observe mobile devices, instant messaging apps, and usability, previous studies have found several usability issues in their usage [11][12][13][14][15][16]. Given the fact that creating and attracting users to use a MIM app does not require too much effort, improving usability should be the key to maintain users using the app [17,18]. It is true that web usability is highly widespread and, therefore, the use of usability guidelines is quite common in web development and research. However, mobile usability guidelines (sometimes also referred to as recommendations, standards or directives, depending on the authors) are rather infrequent to be found in mobile research studies, as derived from the current literature review [19,20].As said before, MIM apps show a large number of users in a wide range of apps. Based on th...

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“…Based on the findings of Koyuncu and Pusalti [10], showing that user's mobile security awareness is considerably low compared to computers' security awareness. Message transmissions are not secured and private as they should, as derived from Conti et al [11], Johansen et al [12], and Aceto et al [13,14] researches on network traffic analysis. Additionally, and related to privacy issues, some studies have pointed out that there are no clear privacy policies for users, leaving unanswered (either unexplicit or complex to understand) how data are managed by the app [15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Potential of Scents for Enhancement of User Performance with Mobile Apps

Caro‐Alvaro

Alkasasbeh

García-López

et al. 2022

Mobile Information Systems

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Intelligent mobile phones, or simply smartphones, have seen a large widespread usage among the entire world population during the last years. These devices are, in fact, considered as an essential tool in our current day to day life activities. Aromatherapy could be defined as the medical usage of essential oils derived from diverse types of vegetables. Although this paper does not look through direct medical usages or benefits, it is focused on one of its main effects, the stimuli to enhance focus. This study makes use of one of the main essential oils, rosemary, as olfactory stimuli over regular users performing a set of tasks with mobile apps. Results of the experimental group, when compared to regular users not affected with olfactory stimuli, aim to suggest that there is not a clear impact on mobile users’ performance. Nonetheless, more research is needed to categorize the effects of aromatherapy on mobile users.

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The Snowden Phone: A Comparative Survey of Secure Instant Messaging Mobile Applications

Cited by 5 publications

References 38 publications

Hope of Delivery: Extracting User Locations From Mobile Instant Messengers

Hope of Delivery: Extracting User Locations From Mobile Instant Messengers

Applying usability recommendations when developing mobile instant messaging applications

Examining Potential of Scents for Enhancement of User Performance with Mobile Apps

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