Information Inference based on Barometer Sensor in Android Devices

• Author / Creator

  Hafez, Alireza

• Most modern smartphones are equipped with barometer sensors. Accessing barometers does not require any permission or user notification, as it is deemed to be harmless. We show, however, that by simply reading low-rate barometer's samples, any background application can detect user's finger taps on the device's touch screen, and infer information about the positions of the taps. This can reveal sensitive information to background applications that, for security reasons, do not have access to the touch screen input. In addition, we show that barometers' samples reveal information about the smartphone's speaker activity. Specifically, using simple machine learning and classification methods, we detect with high accuracy whether the speaker is silent or playing a given sound such as a ringtone.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Android
  • Barometer
  • Side-Channel Attacks
  • Mobile
  • Security

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-59qm-mw38

• License

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