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Recent advances in the hardware capabilities of mobile hand-held devices have fostered the development of open source operating systems and a wealth of applications for mobile phones and table devices. This new generation of smart devices, including iPhone and Google Android, are powerful enough to accomplish most of the user tasks previously requiring a personal computer. In this talk, we will discuss the cyber threats that stem from these new smart device capabilities and the online application markets for mobile devices. These threats include malware, data exfiltration, exploitation through USB, and user and data tracking. We will present the ongoing George Mason University (GMU) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) efforts to defend against or mitigate the impact of attacks against mobile devices. Our approaches involve analyzing the source code and binaries of mobile applications, hardening the Android Kernel, using Kernel-level network and data encryption, and controlling the communication mechanisms for synchronizing the user contents with computers and other phones. We will also explain the enhanced difficulties in dealing with these security issues when the end-goal is to deploy security-enhanced smart phones into military combat settings. The talk will conclude with a discussion of our current and future research directions and outcomes.
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