Skip to main content

Cross-site Input Inference Attacks on Mobile Web Users

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm 2017)

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate severe cross-site input inference attacks that may compromise the security of every mobile Web user, and quantify the extent to which they can be effective. We formulate our attacks as a typical multi-class classification problem, and build an inference framework that trains a classifier in the training phase and predicts a user’s new inputs in the attacking phase. To make our attacks effective and realistic, we design unique techniques, and address major data quality and data segmentation challenges. We intensively evaluate the effectiveness of our attacks using keystrokes collected from 20 participants. Overall, our attacks are effective, for example, they are about 10.8 times more effective than the random guessing attacks regarding inferring letters. Our results demonstrate that researchers, smartphone vendors, and app developers should pay serious attention to the severe cross-site input inference attacks that can be pervasively performed, and should start to design and deploy effective defense techniques.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 143.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Aviv, A.J., Sapp, B., Blaze, M., Smith, J.M.: Practicality of accelerometer side channels on smartphones. In: Proceedings of the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), pp. 41–50 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Cai, L., Chen, H.: On the practicality of motion based keystroke inference attack. In: Katzenbeisser, S., Weippl, E., Camp, L.J., Volkamer, M., Reiter, M., Zhang, X. (eds.) Trust 2012. LNCS, vol. 7344, pp. 273–290. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30921-2_16

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Miluzzo, E., Varshavsky, A., Balakrishnan, S., Choudhury, R.R.: TapPrints: your finger taps have fingerprints. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, pp. 323–336 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Orfanidis, S.J.: Introduction to Signal Processing. Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Platt, J.: Sequential minimal optimization: a fast algorithm for training support vector machines. Technical report (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Smith, S.W.: The scientist and engineer’s guide to digital signal processing (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Xu, Z., Bai, K., Zhu, S.: TapLogger: inferring user inputs on smartphone touchscreens using on-board motion sensors. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, pp. 113–124 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Yue, C.: Sensor-based mobile web fingerprinting and cross-site input inference attacks. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Mobile Security Technologies (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Same Origin Policy. https://www.w3.org/Security/wiki/Same_Origin_Policy

  10. Weka 3: Data Mining Software in Java. http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/

Download references

Acknowledgment

This research was supported in part by the NSF grant DGE-1619841.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chuan Yue .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Zhao, R., Yue, C., Han, Q. (2018). Cross-site Input Inference Attacks on Mobile Web Users. In: Lin, X., Ghorbani, A., Ren, K., Zhu, S., Zhang, A. (eds) Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. SecureComm 2017. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 238. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78813-5_32

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78813-5_32

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78812-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78813-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics