Promoting mobile computing and security learning using mobile devices

Abstract

It is of vital importance to provide mobile computing and security education to students in the computing fields. As the mobile applications become increasingly popular and inexpensive ways for people to communicate, share information and take advantage of convenient functionality in people's daily lives, they also regularly attract the interests of malicious attackers. Malware and spyware that may damage smart phones or steal sensitive information are also growing in every aspect of people's lives. Another concern lies in insecure mobile application development. This kind of programming makes mobile devices more vulnerable. For example, some insecure exposures of the APIs or the abuse of some components while developing apps will make the applications suffer from potential threats. Although many academic institutions have started to or planned to offer mobile computing courses, there is a shortage of hands-on lab modules and resources that can be integrated into multiple existing computing courses. In this paper, we present our development on mobile computing and security hands-on Labs and share our experiences in teaching courses on mobile computing and security with students' learning feedback using Android mobile devices.