Automatic mediation of resource access in mobile applications

摘要

The subject disclosure is directed towards automated, static analysis-based program code processing that detects unprotected resource accesses by applications, that is, those that do not provide proper opt-in consent dialogs (prompts). In one aspect, consent prompt code is automatically inserted into the program code to protect such unprotected access points. Also described are program representation graph construction and processing, a dominator node-based approach to determine placement points for inserting consent prompt code, and a backward search-based approach for inserting consent prompt code.

主权项

1. In a computing environment, a method, comprising:
automatically processing application program code including locating one or more places in the application program code that do not comply with consent prompting policy, including statically analyzing the application program code including determining where sensitive data is able to be accessed during runtime without a consent prompt being shown to a user prior to the sensitive data being accessed, the method further comprising: constructing a program representation graph representing both calls in the application program code and logic inside individual procedures or methods, by a program graph representation construction component; processing the program representation graph, by a program representation graph processing component, including determining whether the application program code fails to provide a runtime consent dialog prior to a potential runtime access of a privacy-sensitive resource; determining, by one or more placement components, one or more placement points to insert prompting code corresponding to a consent dialog into the application program code if the application program code fails to provide the runtime consent dialog prior to the potential runtime access of the privacy-sensitive resource, wherein the one or more placement components includes a dominator-based placement component and a backward search placement component; constructing a dominator tree, by a dominator tree construction component; processing the dominator tree, by the dominator-based placement component, to attempt to determine the one or more placement points; and, on determining the dominator-based placement component fails to determine the one or more placement points, determining the one or more placement points by the backward search placement component, wherein the dominator-based placement component and the backward search placement component do not choose a placement point within code of a library.