A Risk Assessment Method for Smartphones

Smartphones are multi-purpose ubiquitous devices, which face both, smartphone-specific and typical security threats. This paper describes a method for risk assessment that is tailored for smartphones. The method does not treat this kind of device as a single entity. Instead, it identifies smartphone assets and provides a detailed list of specific applicable threats. For threats that use application permissions as the attack vector, risk triplets are facilitated. The triplets associate assets to threats and permission combinations. Then, risk is assessed as a combination of asset impact and threat likelihood. The method utilizes user input, with respect to impact valuation, coupled with statistics for threat likelihood calculation. Finally, the paper provides a case study, which demonstrates the risk assessment method in the Android platform.