Haohuang Wen (Ohio State University), Phillip Porras (SRI International), Vinod Yegneswaran (SRI International), Zhiqiang Lin (Ohio State University)

The short message service (SMS) is a cornerstone of modern smartphone communication that enables inter-personal text messaging and other SMS-based services (e.g., two-factor authentication). However, it can also be readily exploited to compromise unsuspecting remote victims. For instance, novel exploits such as Simjacker and WIBAttack enable transmission of binary SMS messages that could surreptitiously execute dangerous commands on a victim device. The SMS channel may also be subverted to drive other nefarious activities (e.g., spamming, DoS, and tracking), thereby undermining end-user security and privacy. Unfortunately, neither contemporary smartphone operating systems nor existing defense techniques provide a comprehensive bulwark against the spectrum of evolving SMS-driven threats. To address this limitation, we develop a novel defense framework called RILDEFENDER, which to the best of our knowledge is the first inline prevention system integrated into the radio interface layer (RIL) of Android smartphones. We describe an implementation of RILDEFENDER on three smartphone models with five Android versions of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), and show that it is able to protect users from six types of SMS attacks spanning four adversary models. We evaluate RILDEFENDER against 19 reproduced SMS attacks and 11 contemporary SMS malware samples and find that RILDEFENDER detects all and automatically prevents all but one of these threats without affecting normal cellular operations.

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The “Beatrix” Resurrections: Robust Backdoor Detection via Gram Matrices

Wanlun Ma (Swinburne University of Technology), Derui Wang (CSIRO’s Data61), Ruoxi Sun (The University of Adelaide & CSIRO's Data61), Minhui Xue (CSIRO's Data61), Sheng Wen (Swinburne University of Technology), Yang Xiang (Digital Research & Innovation Capability Platform, Swinburne University of Technology)

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DiffCSP: Finding Browser Bugs in Content Security Policy Enforcement...

Seongil Wi (KAIST), Trung Tin Nguyen (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Saarland University), Jihwan Kim (KAIST), Ben Stock (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security), Sooel Son (KAIST)

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Parakeet: Practical Key Transparency for End-to-End Encrypted Messaging

Harjasleen Malvai (UIUC/IC3), Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias (IST Austria), Alberto Sonnino (Mysten Labs), Esha Ghosh (Microsoft Research), Ercan Oztürk (Meta), Kevin Lewi (Meta), Sean Lawlor (Meta)

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