Asking for (and about) permissions used by android apps

Abstract

Security policies, which specify what applications are allowed to do, are notoriously difficult to specify correctly. Many applications were found to request over-liberal permissions. On mobile platforms, this might prevent a cautious user from installing an otherwise harmless application or, even worse, increase the attack surface in vulnerable applications. As a result of such difficulties, programmers frequently ask about them in on-line fora. Our goal is to gain some insight into both the misuse of permissions and the discussions of permissions in on-line fora. We analyze about 10,000 free apps from popular Android markets and found a significant sub-linear relationship between the popularity of a permission and the number of times when it is misused. We also study the relationship of permission use and the number of questions about the permission on StackOverflow. Finally, we study the effect of the influence of a permission (the functionality that it controls) and the interference of a permission (the number of other permissions that influence the same classes) on the occurrence of both permission misuse and permission discussions in StackOverflow. © 2013 IEEE.