Gaming Mobile Applications: Proof of Concept for Security Exploitation

Abstract

Playing games is fun for game lovers. Many of us especially kids and teenagers spend more time and prefer playing online game compared to the traditional way of the game. They could get more cyber friends and it is a more challenging experience when playing online games. Yet, many of the gamers lack knowledge in preventing security exploitation when playing online mobile game applications(apps). For example, many malwares such as Trojans and worms camouflaged and embedded themselves inside the game especially during installation. Hence this paper presents a proof of concept (POC) security exploitation for mobile gaming applications by using our developed model called Mobotder. It will detect any possible data breach or security exploitation based on geolocation (GPS), permissions, and Application Programming Interface (API) calls. The Mobotder was created and hybrid analyzed in a controlled lab environment, by using open source tools and datasets from Drebin and Google Play Store for training and evaluation. Furthermore, ten (10) anonymous mobile games were downloaded from Google Play Store and evaluated by using the Mobotder model. The result showed that 7 of the games were identified as medium risk. The POC and the model developed could be used as guidance to build secure mobile gaming in the future.