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http://dx.doi.org/10.13089/JKIISC.2022.32.5.845

Vulnerability analysis for AppLock Application  

Hong, Pyo-gil (Catholic University of Pusan)
Kim, Dohyun (Catholic University of Pusan)
Abstract
As the memory capacity of smartphone increases, the type and amount of privacy stored in the smartphone is also increasing. but recently there is an increasing possibility that various personal information such as photos and videos of smartphones may be leaked due to malicious apps by malicious attackers or other people such as repair technicians. This paper analyzed and studied the security and vulnerability of these vault apps by analyzing the cryptography algorithm and data protection function. We analyzed 5.3.7(June 13, 2022) and 3.3.2(December 30, 2020) versions of AppLock, the most downloaded information-hidding apps registered with Google Play, and found various vulnerabilities. In the case of access control, there was a vulnerability in that values for encrypting patterns entered by users were hardcoded into plain text in the source code, and encrypted pattern values were stored in xml files. In addition, in the case of the vault function, there was a vulnerability in that the files and log files for storing in the vault were not encrypted.
Keywords
AppLock; Vault Application; information hiding; vulnerability analysis;
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