Secloud: A cloud-based comprehensive and lightweight security solution for smartphones

As smartphones are becoming more complex and powerful to provide better functionalities, concerns are increasing regarding security threats against their users. Since smartphones use a software architecture similar to PCs, they are vulnerable to the same classes of security risks. Unfortunately, smartphones are constrained by their limited resources that prevent the integration of advanced security monitoring solutions that work with traditional PCs. We propose Secloud, a cloud-based security solution for smartphone devices. Secloud emulates a registered smartphone device inside a designated cloud and keeps it synchronized by continuously passing the device inputs and network connections to the cloud. This allows Secloud to perform a resource-intensive security analysis on the emulated replica that would otherwise be infeasible to run on the device itself. We demonstrate the practical feasibility of Secloud through a prototype for Android devices and illustrate its resource effectiveness by comparing it with on-device solutions. a 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.