International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 8, Issue 5, May-2017 93

ISSN 2229-5518

Security Issues and Solutions in

Abstract-“Mobile computing as a generic term describing ability to use the technology to wirelessly connect to and use centrally
located information and application software through the application of small,portable and wireless computing and communica-
tion devices[1]”. In recent years we can see that it has come a very long way of providing anytime, anywhere service and
access to information needed.It is an interaction between human and computer which allows transmission of data, voice and
video.Mobile computing involves mobile communication, mobile hardware and mobile software. Security is a major concern for
any mobile computing device such as Laptop, Notebook, Mobile Phone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), Smart phone etc. As
all our mobiles contains sensitive data and accesses the Internet. Due to the inherent nature of these devices such as Mobility
and Portability, they encounter additional security issues compare to the conventional computing devices. So there is a need to
secure these devices from the various attacks. In this paper we bring out some of the issues related to mobile device security in
detail, in terms of Physical, Logical, and Network categories. Also have mentioned some simple solutions to overcome these

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issues and to protect the devices from various problems.
Keywords: Mobile computing,security issues, physical issues, logical issues, network based issues ,recommdations,secondary
device
different technologies, which may enable an attacker to exploit
1. INTRODUCTION different routes to execute his / her attacks.
Olden day’s people were using hand phone which was very Deployment of mobile devices in work place is increasing con-
big and bulky and was used only for voice communication. In tinuously as the demand increases in order to improve the
other words we can say that it was merely an extension of the productivity of the mobile workers. Therefore securing these
fixed line telephony that allowed users to keep in touch with devices become very important in the organizations. A recent
colleagues. Now the phone is not only used for voice commu- Survey on the Impact of Mobile devices on Information Securi-
nication, it is also used to send text and multimedia messages. ty [3] reveals the significance of securing Mobile Devices.
Futuremobile devices will not only enable internet access, but
will also support high speed data services.Mobile computing 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
is taking a computer and all necessaryfiles and software to the
A new wearable token system based on the idea of transient
next level.
authentication, which provides more efficient security [4]. The
Security is a major concern for any computing devices which cost of transient authentication is reduced with the careful key
contains sensitive data and accesses the Internet. It is still more
management and prudent communication mechanism and the
mandatory in the case of mobile computing devices such as
users enjoy the benefits of constant re-authentication without
Laptops, Notebooks, Tablets, Mobile Phones, Personal Digital
Assistants (PDAs), Smart phones etc. due to their inherent using their own efforts. The factors to be considered in select-
nature such as Mobility and Portability. ing a mobile device to the corporate have to standardize [5].
The key factors are type of mobile wireless service, security
The security issues of mobile devices are different from the
security issues of traditional Computer systems. The following and device level of enterprise application and platform sup-
are the key factors that make the difference between these two port. Multi model biometrics based user verification is sug-
computing devices: Mobility, Strong Personalization, Strong gested in mobile computing [6]. In this method, unobtrusive
Connectivity, Technology Convergence and Resource con- biometric is used initially and if it fails, then explicit effort is
straints [2]. applied.
The mobile device moves along with us wherever we go. Be- Voice Recognition and Fingerprint recognition are proposed
cause of this Mobility, the chance of mobile theft or loss is in- as reliable security measures for cell phones [7]. IBM Linux
creased. Unlike the computer system, the mobile device is not Wristwatch as a wearable token, which has a short range wire-
normally shared by more than one person. It supports mul- less link and modest computational resources is used for au-
tiple ways to connect to a Networks or Internet. Due to these thentication [8]. The various security issues of mobile devices
strong Personalization and Connectivity threat of Privacy vi- are increasing day by day [9].
olation is increased. A single mobile device integrates with
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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 8, Issue 5, May-2017 94
ISSN 2229-5518
3. OBJECTIVE mobile operating system (MOS), which is not an easy job. Secu-
rity relates not only to the data loss but also to the system down-
• To make aware of different security issues existing with time. If the lack of security prevents a user to make a single
respect to mobile devices today phone call on his/her mobile device, the user experience will be
• To know how to overcome those challenges easily to weakened immensely. The access control model used by majority
protect our devices of the mobile operating systems is fairly strong on the base de-
• To implement some security protection in the mobile vice and it is fully supported by the MOS vendors. But the exter-
computing environment in a standard way. nal SD cards are supported by FAT permission model, which is
not highly secure. By providing proper Access Control Mechan-
4. SECURITY ISSUES ism, data integrity is protected by limiting who can access/alter
Mobile devices must be protected from an array of is- the data and to what extent.
sues/threats/risks in order to provide security. The issues can be C. NETWORK ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS
categorized into 4 types namely Physical Issues, Logical Issues, 1) WIRELESS ATTACKS
Network Issues and Personnel issues There are varieties of attacks which leverage the wireless connec-
A. PHYSICAL ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS tivity of the target. Since mobile devices support communication
1) LOSS OR THEFT OF DEVICE through wireless connection, they are often affected by eave-
If the device gets lost or stolen, the confidentiality of the data sdropping to extract confidential and sensitive information, such
stored is also lost. After a period of time if the device is found, as usernames and passwords. Wireless attacks also misuse the
integrity may be lost. There is a possibility of installing spyware unique hardware identification such as wireless LAN MAC ad-
or adding a physical bug to the hardware that leads to tampering dress for tracking or profiling the owner of the device. Malware
the system. Although this threat is common for any device, mo- often exploits Bluetooth as a medium to speed up its propagation.
bile devices are more likely to be lost as they are small and con- For example, Cabir is a worm that propagates through Bluetooth.
stantly moving along with their users. Once a device is lost, eve- Phishing/Spamming/Spoofing/Man-in-the middle attacks are also

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rything that is stored inside is also lost. Encryption and remote caused by wireless connectivity.
wiping are the possible solutions for this problem. 2) MALWARE/ VIRUS/ TROZAN HORSE/
2) SECONDARY STORAGE DEVICES WORM/ SPYWARE ATTACKS
Care should be taken to keep the secondary storage devices safe Malware is software that is often masqueraded as a game, patch
so that they are not lost or stolen. The sensitive information such or other useful third party software applications. It passes into the
as Passwords, PINs, Credentials, Corporate data like customers mobile device as a Trojan which appears to provide some func-
list, etc. may be stored in secondary storage (e.g., flash memory) tionality but contains malicious program. Keystroke logging is
of the mobile devices which must be secured from the attackers. another type of malware that records keystrokes on mobile de-
If they are not properly protected, along with the personal infor- vice. Using these keystrokes, it captures the sensitive information
mation, the valuable corporate secrets also will be exposed. En- and sends it to a cybercriminal’s website or e-mail address. Mal-
cryption is the only way to protect these sensitive data. ware also includes viruses, spyware etc. Once it is installed, it can
B. LOGICAL ISSUES AND SOLUTION initiate an array of attacks and multiply itself on other devices.
1) USER AUTHENTICATION The malicious applications can do the following functions: re-
The personal or corporate data stored in the mobile devices trieving sensitive information, gaining control over user’s brows-
should not be read or modified by unauthorized people. Other- ing history, initiating telephone calls, initiating mobile device
wise the confidentiality and integrity of the mobile data will be microphone or camera to secretly record information, and down-
lost. The use of corporate data by the traveling people is increas- loading other malicious applications.
ing day by day and it creates more threats on data privacy. Proper Virus - It is a program that replicates itself and infects the mobile
Authentication mechanism such as Password / device without knowledge of the user. Initially it infects a mobile
PIN/Token/Biometric factors like Fingerprint, Iris recognition, device and then slowly spreads to the other devices and finally to
Voice recognition etc. should be implemented to protect the sen- the server during the synchronization process. Security tech-
sitive data stored in the mobile device. niques configured only for detecting the external attacks can be
2) CONFIDENTIALITY OF DATA easily bypassed by such type of viruses. One of the worst viruses
Personal data such as Bank account number, ATM password that targets the mobile phones and makes the infected phone unusable
are stored in the mobile device should not be known to others. by locking it up completely. Most of the viruses enter into the
Similarly the sensitive corporate data like customer list and their devices by downloading a corrupted email attachment or visiting
phone numbers are kept carefully inthe device. If others hap- a phishing website. Ex. Dust, Lasco, Cardblock.
pened to see the data, the confidentiality and privacy of the da- Trojan Horse - It is a program that embeds itself within an appar-
ta/organization will be lost. Unauthorized disclo- ently harmless or trusted application. It depends on the action of
sure/modification/withholding of data should be prevented. Ef- the user to succeed, and requires successful use of social engi-
fective Encryption techniques and strong Access Control me- neering rather than the ability to exploit flaws in the security de-
chanisms are the possible solutions to maintain the confidentiality sign or configuration of the target.
of the mobile data. Worm - Replicates itself to spread across networks. It can poten-
3) MOBILE OS tially overwhelm mobile devices and fixed computer systems,
Mobile software vendors must take the responsibility of securing and does not need to be a part of another application in order to
spread itself. Ex. CABIR, CommWarrior, Feak.
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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 8, Issue 5, May-2017 95
ISSN 2229-5518
Spyware - It is a program which is secretly installed to log and done in data server
report user activities and personal data. Ex. FlexiSpy.
3) OVERBILLING ATTACK 6. FINDINGS
In this attack, the attacker sends random traffic to the IPad- The usage of mobile devices is increasing day by day in num-
dress of the victim. The provider would not check if the traffic ber and type as it makes life more convenient for users. To-
was requested by the victim or not, and bill the victim for it. day's computing had rapidly grown from being confined to a
The attack utilizes the ‘always on’ characteristics of GPRS, single location. With mobile computing, people can work from
which is billed by the amount of traffic instead of the usage the comfort of any location they wish to as long as the connec-
time. The goal of the attacker is to charge additional fees to the tion and the security concerns are properly factored. The im-
victim’s account, and if possible, acquire these extra fees from provement in the memory capacity has enabled people to
the victim. store more corporate sensitive data and personal data in their
D. PERSONNEL ISSUES mobile devices. But Mobile devices continue to be a source of
1) INSIDER ATTACK security incidents. So the situation calls for more security me-
It is a non-technical attack. Due to the lack of awareness of thods.. .
security policies, many security breaches occur. Even though
corporate has Standard Policies for mobile device security, 7. CONCLUSION
employees don’t understand the risks associated with it. In [3], In this paper the security issues of mobile devices, possible
it is found that careless employees pose greater security risks solutions and recommendations are discussed to an extent.
(72%) than hackers (28%), which reinforces the importance of Still there is a need to find an innovative techniques or me-
implementing a strong combination of technology and securi- thods or approaches to put an end to the threats and issues
ty awareness throughout the organization. which will continue as a never ending process.

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5. SOLUTIONS REFERENCE
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ISSN 2229-5518
[11] Michael Becher, Felix C. Freiling, Johannes Hoffmann, Thorsten
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