TY - GEN
T1 - On Security and Energy Efficiency in Android Smartphones
AU - Ferreira, Joao
AU - Santos, Bernardo
AU - Oliveira, Wellington
AU - Antunes, Nuno
AU - Cabral, Bruno
AU - Fernandes, Joao Paulo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IEEE.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Smartphones are so immersed in our everyday lives that it is hard to imagine our routines without them. For most of us, they have already replaced alarm clocks, calculators, organizers, maps, and countless other things. As such, running out of battery charge means losing all of these functionalities, not just the inability to communicate using calls or messages, which can already be critical. The widespread usage of mobile devices is accompanied by a growing number of cybercriminals exploring scams for (illicit) benefits. Indeed, the more data flowing through mobile devices and apps, the greater the possibility of exploring threats and attacks. Users are then concerned about unintended access to critical data such as sensitive stored information, bank accounts, passwords, social media accounts, or private files. Although documented strategies exist to mitigate security risks, implementing the corresponding security mechanisms may impose an overhead on energy consumption, which in practice, affects the device's battery charge. In this paper, we analyse the impact of security mechanisms on energy consumption in the context of Android mobile devices. We investigate the energy consumption of operations such as copying files and logging in with and without encrypting the credentials. Our results quantify the energy overhead of certain security mechanisms and confirm that there is a statistically significant increase in energy consumption when security standards, e.g., data encryption, are adopted. This work highlights the need for understanding the trade-offs between energy consumption and security in mobile devices and serves as a reference for mobile application developers to consider energy efficiency when implementing security measures.
AB - Smartphones are so immersed in our everyday lives that it is hard to imagine our routines without them. For most of us, they have already replaced alarm clocks, calculators, organizers, maps, and countless other things. As such, running out of battery charge means losing all of these functionalities, not just the inability to communicate using calls or messages, which can already be critical. The widespread usage of mobile devices is accompanied by a growing number of cybercriminals exploring scams for (illicit) benefits. Indeed, the more data flowing through mobile devices and apps, the greater the possibility of exploring threats and attacks. Users are then concerned about unintended access to critical data such as sensitive stored information, bank accounts, passwords, social media accounts, or private files. Although documented strategies exist to mitigate security risks, implementing the corresponding security mechanisms may impose an overhead on energy consumption, which in practice, affects the device's battery charge. In this paper, we analyse the impact of security mechanisms on energy consumption in the context of Android mobile devices. We investigate the energy consumption of operations such as copying files and logging in with and without encrypting the credentials. Our results quantify the energy overhead of certain security mechanisms and confirm that there is a statistically significant increase in energy consumption when security standards, e.g., data encryption, are adopted. This work highlights the need for understanding the trade-offs between energy consumption and security in mobile devices and serves as a reference for mobile application developers to consider energy efficiency when implementing security measures.
KW - Android
KW - Energy Consumption
KW - Mobile Device
KW - Mobile Security
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85165974218&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85165974218&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/MOBILSoft59058.2023.00018
DO - 10.1109/MOBILSoft59058.2023.00018
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85165974218
T3 - Proceedings - 2023 IEEE/ACM 10th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems, MOBILESoft 2023
SP - 87
EP - 95
BT - Proceedings - 2023 IEEE/ACM 10th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems, MOBILESoft 2023
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 10th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems, MOBILESoft 2023
Y2 - 14 May 2023 through 15 May 2023
ER -