Ανάλυση της ασφάλειας εφαρμογών γνωριμιών σε κινητά τηλέφωνα
Analysis of security in mobile dating applications
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Keywords
Ασφάλεια δικτύων και συστημάτων ; Κινητά δίκτυα ; Προσωπικά δεδομένα ; Ανάλυση και σχεδίαση συστημάτων ; Mobile computing ; AndroidAbstract
The growth of the Internet within the last years is a fact. On a daily basis, new Internet-based websites, services and application are created. In addition, the access to the Internet has become way easier through smart mobile devices (such as mobile phones/tablets etc.).
A widely known category of applications that do use the Internet has a purpose of connecting people in a way similar of a date. Most of these applications are implemented in a way that a user can search people that fit in a specific category regarding age, nationality, personal interests, the real location of a user, etc. With attractive features like that, these applications are growing more and more in popularity.
The information that these application get from their users varies and can contain personal information (like real names and addresses), photos of themselves, and their sexual preferences. It is doubtful though that they provide the necessary security to their users and that their information is protected.
In this work we study the security of dating applications used in mobile devices. Most of the applications used in this study are the currently most known in their category. By simply using dating applications, they may not seem to be dangerous in revealing information that they should not, but if we study the actual packets that are transmitted through them, we can clearly find out potential issues in terms of their security.
A specific number of dating applications is studied in this work and as a result we provide a list of all security issues that were found. We analyze specifically what are those issues and how each one of them can result in a risk of the security of a user. After an extended analysis of those issues we will get an idea of whether dating applications are really safe to use or not.