Towards Comprehensible and Effective Permission Systems

Towards Comprehensible and Effective Permission Systems by Adrienne Porter Felt A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor David Wagner, Chair Professor Vern Paxson Professor Tapan Parikh Fall 2012 Towards Comprehensible and Effective Permission Systems Copyright c 2012 by Adrienne Porter Felt Abstract Towards Comprehensible and Effective Permission Systems by Adrienne Porter Felt Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California, Berkeley Professor David Wagner, Chair How can we, as platform designers, protect computer users from the threats associated with malicious, privacy-invasive, and vulnerable applications? Modern platforms have turned away from the traditional user-based permission model and begun adopting application permission systems in an attempt to shield users from these threats. This dissertation evaluates modern permission systems with the goal of improving the security of future platforms. In platforms with application permission systems, applications are unprivileged by default and must request permissions in order to access sensitive API calls. Developers specify the permissions that their applications need, and users approve the granting of permissions. Permissions are intended to provide defense in depth by restricting the scope of vulnerabilities and user consent by allowing users to control whether third parties have access to their resources. In this dissertation we investigate whether permission systems are effective at providing defense in depth and user consent. First, we perform two studies to evaluate whether permissions provide defense in depth: we analyze applications to determine whether developers request mini- mal sets of permissions, and we quantify the impact of permissions on real-world vulnerabilities. Next, we evaluate whether permissions obtain the user’s informed consent by surveying and inter- viewing users. We use the Android application and Google Chrome extension platforms for our studies; at present, they are popular platforms with extensive permission systems. Our goal is to inform the design of future platforms with our findings. We argue that permissions are a valuable addition to a platform, and our study results support continued work on permission systems. However, current permission warnings fail to inform the majority of users about the risks of applications. We propose a set of guidelines to aid in the design of more user- friendly permissions, based on our user research and relevant literature. 1 Contents Contents i Acknowledgements iv 1 Introduction 1 2 An Overview of Approaches to Permissions 4 2.1 Permissions For Malicious Users . 4 2.2 Permissions For Adversarial Applications . 5 2.3 Usable Permissions . 7 3 Case Studies’ Backgrounds 16 3.1 Android Applications . 16 3.2 Chrome Extensions . 20 4 Developers’ Permission Request Patterns 23 4.1 Introduction . 23 4.2 Permission Request Rates . 24 4.3 Overprivilege in Android Applications . 30 4.4 Overprivilege in Chrome Extensions . 44 4.5 Other Overprivilege Considerations . 48 4.6 Conclusion . 48 4.7 Acknowledgements . 49 5 The Effect of Permissions on Chrome Extension Vulnerabilities 50 5.1 Introduction . 50 i 5.2 Threat Model . 51 5.3 Extension Security Review . 52 5.4 Evaluation of the Permission System . 55 5.5 Evaluation of Isolated Worlds . 57 5.6 Evaluation of Privilege Separation . 59 5.7 Defenses . 62 5.8 Related Work . 66 5.9 Conclusion . 67 5.10 Acknowledgements . 68 6 Android Permissions: User Attention, Comprehension, and Behavior 69 6.1 Introduction . 69 6.2 Methodology . 70 6.3 Attention During Installation . 74 6.4 Comprehension of Permissions . 80 6.5 Influence on User Behavior . 86 6.6 Implications . 88 6.7 Conclusion . 91 6.8 Acknowledgments . 92 7 A Survey of Smartphone Users’ Concerns 93 7.1 Introduction . 93 7.2 Ratings . 94 7.3 Open-Ended Survey . 99 7.4 Reasons for Uninstallation . 102 7.5 Limitations . 104 7.6 Discussion . 105 7.7 Conclusion . 106 7.8 Acknowledgments . 107 8 How To Ask For Permission 108 8.1 Introduction . 108 8.2 Guiding Principles . 109 ii 8.3 Permission-Granting Mechanisms . 110 8.4 Expert Review . 115 8.5 Applying Our Guidelines . 116 8.6 Future Work . 121 8.7 Acknowledgements . 122 9 Conclusion 123 A Lists of Applications 124 A.1 Extension Overprivilege . 124 A.2 Extension Vulnerabilities . 124 B Full Results Of User Concern Survey 126 C Categorized Permissions 129 D Research Ethics and Safety 135 Bibliography 136 iii Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without my family, friends, and colleagues. I would like to express my thanks to everyone who has provided me with support. I owe my deepest gratitude to my family. My family has always encouraged me to be curious, tenacious, and ambitious. I attribute my career in computing to my upbringing; at present, women are underrepresented in the field of Computer Science, but the lessons I learned at home taught me not to be intimidated by the gender imbalance. My father brought me to his software company’s office, my grandfather patiently answered all of my grade school “interview” questions about his career, and my mother never accepted my excuses for not completing my math homework. I was always told that I could accomplish anything. I am grateful to my husband Mark, who always provided me with his patience and support. Without him, I surely would have starved while working on paper deadlines. I would like to thank my graduate advisor, Professor David Wagner. His keen advice taught me how to formulate problems and identify feasible research directions. Too often, academia is harsh and hypercritical; David taught me how to temper criticism with kindness and a genuine desire to help. I also would like to thank my undergraduate advisor, Professor David Evans, who introduced me to research and encouraged me to consider graduate school. I would not have applied to graduate school without his assurance that I was capable of completing a Ph.D. Professors Vern Paxson, Coye Cheshire, and Tapan Parikh provided valuable feedback on my work that helped shape my research. Their comments contributed greatly to the way I thought about the problems discussed within this dissertation. I am also indebted to Adam Barth, who served as my unofficial mentor during my first year of graduate school. He taught me how to write a research paper. iv Chapter 1 Introduction Most modern platforms support large, thriving third-party application marketplaces. Users can select from an unprecedented number of applications to supplement their experiences with their smartphones, computers, web browsers, and social networking sites. For example, as of 2012, Google Play lists over 500,000 Android applications, the Facebook platform supports more than nine million applications, and the Apple App Store includes more than 600,000 iOS applications [106, 53]. These applications offer a diverse set of features from a diverse set of developers. Unfortunately, third-party applications create risks for the user. Many otherwise legitimate applications aggressively collect personal information about their users (e.g., for marketing cam- paigns) in ways that make users uncomfortable [144]. Malicious applications use social engineer- ing tactics to convince users to install them [64, 159, 48, 134]. Applications can also put users at risk of external (e.g., network-based) attacks by containing vulnerabilities; the authors of third- party applications usually are not security experts [104, 154]. How can platform designers help users avoid these threats while still supporting a broad range of colorful applications? Traditional user-based security mechanisms were designed to protect users from each other on time-shared computers, in an era when most applications were downloaded from trusted sources or written by users themselves. Consequently, traditional operating systems assign the user’s full privileges to all applications. However, this threat model is no longer appropriate now that users cannot fully trust their applications. Modern platforms are consequently transitioning to a new security model in which each application has a different set of permissions based on its requirements. These permissions control applications’ access to security- and privacy-relevant system resources, so that users can decide whether to give individual applications access to these sensitive resources. This new style of permission system can be found in contemporary smartphone operating systems (e.g., Android and Windows Phone 7), new desktop operating systems (e.g., Windows 8 Metro), social networking platforms (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), and browsers (e.g., the Google Chrome extension platform and new HTML5 features). In some of these platforms, users are prompted to approve permissions as needed by applications at runtime. In others, developers are asked to declare their applications’ permission requirements up-front so that users can grant per- 1 missions at install-time. Regardless of when the permission request occurs, users are asked to make security decisions on a per-application basis, and developers need to design their applications to work within the constraints of the permission systems. This dissertation evaluates whether modern permission systems have a positive effect on end user security, with the goal of guiding the design of security mechanisms in future

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