DEMO: Starving Permission-Hungry Android Apps Using SecuRank

Abstract

We demonstrate SecuRank, a tool that can be employed by Android smartphone users to replace their currently installed apps with functionally-similar ones that require less sensitive access to their device. SecuRank works by using text mining on the app store description of apps to perform groupings by functionality. Once groups of functionally-similar apps are found, SecuRank uses contextual permission usage within groups to identify those apps that are less permission-hungry. Our demonstration will showcase both the Android app version of SecuRank and the web-based version. Participants will see the effectiveness of SecuRank as a tool for finding and replacing apps with less permission-hungry alternatives.