IRJET - System to Identify and Define Security Threats to the users About The Illegitimate Installed Applications

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 07 Issue: 03 | Mar 2020 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2020, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.34 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 4042
System to Identify AND Define Security Threats TO THE Users ABOUT
THE Illegitimate Installed Applications
Shashank Machare1, Mahesh Patil2, Ashwini Bansode3, Tanvi Pawar4, Mr. A.N Gedam5
1,2,3,4Student, Dept. of Computer Engineering, A.I.S.S.M.S. Polytechnic, Pune, Maharashtra, India
5Lecturer, Dept. of Computer Engineering, A.I.S.S.M.S. Polytechnic, Pune, Maharashtra, India
---------------------------------------------------------------------***----------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract – Mobile security is one of the most important
aspect when it comes to keeping our data secure from any
external attack like phishing, data hacking and many other
attacks that can have very disastrous effects that may also
lead to social disturbance, as in one’s private data can be
made public by the attackers. Indeed, one of the main reason
for such attacks to get executed, the hacker need to get into
the victim’s mobile phone’s system through which it can look
for the loopholes that will lead him/her to the data that
could be extracted by using the hacking techniques. Access
to a very large amount of data in various formats like
images and videos can be gained by simply getting inside
the phone memory through a third-party application that
has access to the phone’s memory. Hence, there’s a need of
an application software that will detect such applications by
scanning throughout the phones memory and inform the
user about the possible threats posed by them.
KeyWords: Application, Software, Security, Memory,
third-party applications, scanning.
1. INTRODUCTION
The android systems are usually found to be vulnerable to
the external threats as the mobile devices are all the time
exposed to the spywares and malwares that are spread
throughout the internet abundantly. The hackers can
easily gain access to a mobile phone which is connected to
the internet through the website which the device is
currently logged on. Hacker does the work of gaining
access in the user’s mobile device by using various
techniques and harmful spywares. Data can be observed,
and also exploited by the hackers easily. This can also be
done by getting into the victim’s phone’s operating system
through an .apk file. Usually, the applications are
downloaded from the android play store which comes
with the very famous google play protect scanning feature
that helps in keeping the platform free from such
applications that carry special encoded software programs
to intentionally observe and steal user data from the
phone memory. Of course everyone are aware that the
play store is not the only source to download applications
from, one such platform is the infamous ‘Internet’, by
using an application browser we can access the web which
is daily flooded with so many harmful applications that
have been specially designed to steal the user data.
Applications downloaded from the internet through a
browser usually are not scanned for malwares, hence
putting the user data at risk. These applications may carry
specialized codes, on execution may look for private user
data from the system memory and send it to the hacker’s
servers through the internet connection. We usually refer
to such application as third-party applications and are
installed by the user themselves unaware of the threats
they may pose. Many times the applications are auto
downloaded or installed in the phone memory whenever
we visit a harmful website. Hence it is necessary to have
an application that does the work of detecting such
applications files lying inside the phone memory or are
installed without the user knowledge.
1.1 PROBLEM DEFINITION
The main purpose of making an application that can scan
through the phone memory and identify the underlying
applications files that have been downloaded and are
present in the system storage without the user’s
knowledge is to completely nullify the possibility of a
security threat i.e data loss or hacking by the hackers.
1.2 LITERATURE SURVEY
All the modern devices come with in-built system to fight
against the already acknowledged viruses by the operating
system developers, which is updated through the regular
security patches. But one main features missing in it is
about finding the applications that have been installed or
only downloaded and are yet to be installed in the phone
memory from the unknown sources and could be easily
identified as illegitimate application files that may
potentially harm a device. So here we propose a ‘System to
identify and define security threats to the users about the
illegitimate installed applications’. By using ‘MobiSecure’
application, the users can find the applications files that
have been downloaded into their phone’s memory without
their knowledge.
2. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
The proposed framework is an application that has all the
ability to look throughout the phone memory for the
application files usually with ‘.apk’ extension. The main
reason behind the development of application is the ability
to offer real-time diagnosis of latest installed or
downloaded files that can lead to cyber-attacks. The
normal mobile phone users should be aware of every

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 07 Issue: 03 | Mar2020 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2020, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.34 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 4043
installed application and their corresponding threats,
which ideally are not known to majority of them, hence we
aim at providing the users information about the threats a
latest installed application software or file may contain.
‘System to identify and define security threats to the users
about the illegitimate installed applications’ has following
features:
 User and Device Interface
 File scanning function
 Threat finding feature
 Suggestion of threats to the user
 Listing the application files that are system-default
hidden
3. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND FUNCTIONING
The application developed is capable of running on
minimum API 19 level that is it will support 97.3%
android devices. The application has 2 main modules
namely, Home page and Result display page. Our
application is designed to scan for illegitimate applications
that have been installed from unknown sources eg.
Browser, shared through different media sharing
platforms etc. Such application acts as the medium for
various cyber attacks that would be executed by the
hackers.
Explaining the modules:
1. Home page
Home page consist of a short summary to our application
and its features and a scan button which on clicked starts
to look for .apk files that usually don’t come from a
legitimate source, provided the data on the phone memory
is accessible.
2. Result page
As soon as the scan is complete, the results from the scan
i.e list of application is displayed on the result page with a
short description. Also to make it more convenient for the
users to take action on those applications, we provide with
an option that will trigger the deletion of that specific
application file from the phone memory hence nullifying
all the risk the user were first exposed to.
Fig -1: System Architecture
4. CONCLUSION
Using mobile application that has the capability of
identifying the applications that may contain malware can
substantially decrease the threat of various cyber attacks
that are drastically increasing in this growing world of
computers. ‘MobiSecure’ can nullify the risk of cyber
attacks by identifying the applications that have been
installed from illegitimate sources and providing the user
an option to delete those applications from the phone
memory.
5. REFERENCES
[1] P.K.Dixit, “Android”, 2014.
[2] Philip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?:
The inspiration behind Blade Runner and Blade
Runner 2049” , 16 Feb 2012
[3] Dave Maclean, Satya Komatineni, Grant Allen “Pro
Android 5 (Apress)” , 2015
[4] Anubhav Pradhan,Anil V. Deshpande, ”Composing
Mobile App, Learn | Explore | Apply” , 2014
[5] Clifton ,“Andriod User Interfce Design: Implementing
Material Design for Developers” , 3 Mar 2016
[6] Jon Erickson, “Hacking: The art of exploitation”, 2nd
Edition
[7] Steven Furnell, “Mobile Security: A pocket guide”, July
2009

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