Covert Association of Applications on Edge Devices by Processor Workload
This addresses a security problem for edge device users by exposing a vulnerability that could lead to de-anonymization and escalated privileges, though it is incremental as it builds on known covert channel techniques.
The paper tackles the threat of covert device association in edge computing, where colluding apps can identify if they are installed on the same device using a processor workload-based covert channel, achieving at least 0.25 bps data rate and completing association in at most 3.2 minutes.
The scheme of application (app) distribution systems involving incentivized third-party app vendors is a desirable option for the emerging edge computing systems. However, such a scheme also brings various security challenges as faced by the current mobile app distribution systems. In this paper, we study a threat named covert device association, in which the vendors of two apps collude to figure out which of their app installations run on the same edge device. If the two colluding apps are popular, the threat can be used to launch various types of further attacks at scale. For example, the user of the compromised edge device, who wishes to remain anonymous to one of the two apps, will be de-anonymized if the user is not anonymous to the other app. Moreover, the coalition of the two apps will have an escalated privilege set that is the union of their individual privilege sets. In this paper, we implement the threat by a reliable and ubiquitous covert channel based on the edge device processor workload. The implementations on three edge devices (two smartphones and an embedded compute board) running Android and Android Things do not require any privileged permissions. Our implementations cover three attack scenarios of 1) two apps running on the same Android phone, 2) an app and a web session in the Tor browser running on the same Android phone, and 3) two apps running on the same Android Things device. Experiments show that the covert channel gives at least 0.25 bps data rate and the covert device association takes at most 3.2 minutes.