Measuring and estimating power consumption in Android to support energy-based intrusion detection

Issue title: Security and High Performance Computing Systems

Guest editors: Luca Spalazzi and Luca Viganò

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Merlo, Alessio^{a; *} | Migliardi, Mauro^b | Fontanelli, Paolo^a

Affiliations: [a] DIBRIS – University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy. E-mail: alessio.merlo@unige.it | [b] DEI – University of Padua, Padua, Italy. E-mail: mauro.migliardi@unipd.it

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Alessio Merlo, DIBRIS – University of Genoa, Via all’Opera Pia 13, 16145 Genoa, Italy. E-mail: alessio.merlo@unige.it.

Abstract: This paper investigates the feasibility of constructing power-consumption-based sensors for the identification of security threats (e.g. battery-drain attacks) on Android based mobile devices. In particular, this paper proposes a measurement methodology and high-level models for the energy consumption of two very important hardware subsystems in a mobile device, namely the Wi-Fi and the CPU. The measuring methodology and the high-level models are then compared to others described in the literature and validated through actual experiments. Finally, the proposed methodology is tested with an energy oriented variant of the ping-flood attack performed while a legitimate application is running. Experimental results show that the measurement methodology is sound, precise and reliable in detecting the onset of an attack.

Keywords: Mobile security, energy-based threats detection, measurement techniques, power consumption modeling, Wi-Fi, CPU

DOI: 10.3233/JCS-150530

Journal: Journal of Computer Security, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 611-637, 2015