Usage patterns based security attacks for smart devices

Smart devices are increasingly becoming part and parcel of daily life and as well as becoming the center of attraction for security attacks. This paper introduces a novel malware which exploits the usage patterns of smart devices and launches malicious attacks. A useful Android application is developed which aims to provide user-specific power saving profiles by analyzing individual usage patterns. The application collects various usage information including running applications, battery level and status, brightness level, status of wireless networks and amount of data transfer. These informations are analyzed at a remote server to generate usage patterns and personalized power saving solutions. Since the application requires access to wide range of information from the smart devices, the application is examined for potential malicious exploitation. The malicious functionalities are well hidden in the application and can be triggered by hidden commands sent as a part of the power saving profiles from the remote server. As the malware takes advantage of individual usage patterns, it is relatively difficult to detect it. Possible attacks on smart device resources have been mentioned in details. Effective countermeasures are being developed and implemented to detect and erase such malwares. Research directions for the countermeasures are still open.