SECURITY EVALUATION OF THE SMARTPHONE PLATFORMS: A CASE STUDY WITH ANDROID, iOS AND WINDOWS PHONES
MICHAEL OPOKU *
Department of Computer Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
JOSEPH G. DAVIS
Department of Computer Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
PETER NIMBE
Department of Computer Science, Catholic University College of Ghana, Sunyani-Fiapre, Ghana
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
This paper presents an evaluation of the smartphone platforms based on security policies provided by platform owners to determine which of the platforms is secure, safe and reliable. The issue of secrecy and confidentiality is very vital when dealing with users. Security of a particular platform is of essence to the smartphone industry and users, as new features added by developers could introduce vulnerabilities exposing the platform to security threats. It is a critical area to the smartphone industries as the need to protect user sensitive data, other applications and the operating system has increased, especially now that there is an intense competition among the platform owners in their attempt to control the market share. A security implementation scenario is proposed to effectively carry out the security evaluation of the smartphone platforms.
Keywords: Android OS, iPhone OS (iOS), windows phone OS, permission system models, isolation model, encryption model, application provenance