US researchers have developed software that will help protect Android smartphone users, according to reports.
Infosecurity magazine states that the North Carolina State University has created what it calls TISSA (Taming Information-Stealing Smartphone Applications).
The software has been specifically developed to help prevent hackers from stealing confidential information from smartphones running Google's Android operating system (OS).
The anti-hacking software for Android developed by the university comprises four new privacy settings, said the magazine.
Smartphones running Android are becoming increasingly popular. According to research released in March by Nielsen, a ratings and research agency, Android has now reached a 29 per cent market share in the smartphone OS market - ahead of Research in Motion and Apple.
With this growth, Google has been attempting to head off Android hack attacks by continually bolstering the OS's security. North Carolina State University says its TISSA software will add another layer of protection for Android users.
Dr Xuxian Jiang, the assistant professor of computing at the university who co-authored a research paper on the new software, told Infosecurity magazine: "We have developed software that creates a privacy mode for Android systems, giving users flexible control over what personal information is available to various applications".
A prototype has been developed, and it is expected that Dr Jiang's research paper providing full details of the system will be unveiled at the 4th International Conference on Trust and Trustworthy Computing, in Pittsburgh, Pa., in June.
TISSA works by enabling users to use four customised privacy settings called Trusted, Anonymised, Bogus and Empty to help boost their Android app security.
Trusted means an app can run unrestricted, and Anonymised means the user only allows the app to run with general information. If a user is doubtful about the security of an app, they can select the Bogus setting which sends fake results to the app, while the Empty setting says to the app that information does not exist, or is unavailable.
"These settings may be further specialised for different types of information, such as your contact list or your location", Dr Jiang told Infosecurity.
Further resources:
Mobile Communications Security
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