Android

Smartphone Network Connection Monitoring Tools for monitoring and modifying connections between web browsers and web servers are essential for debugging, testing, optimizing performance, and assessing vulnerabilities of web-based applications and native applications. Developers, security professionals, and anyone with an interest in gaining insight into the lower levels of web traffic commonly use these tools. There are many mature options for monitoring connections from desktop machines. Unfortunately, there are fewer tools to monitor connections on smartphones and these tools often require more complex configurations, as the monitoring software must run on a separate device. In this article, I present an overview of tools and methods for monitoring network connections on Smartphones including devices based on Apple’s iOS–iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), Google’s Android OS, BlackBerry OS, and Symbian. This article focuses on inspecting HTTP and HTTPS traffic, although many of the tools and techniques described work equally well to analyze other protocols. ...

Recent versions of desktop Web browsers and email clients feature phishing and malware protection in addition to improved security notifications and indicators. Unfortunately, many of these improvements have not reached their mobile device counterparts. While the patterns of use and the threat model for Web browsing and email on mobile devices differ from desktop applications, as smartphones become more capable they present an increasingly attractive target. Institutions and services that wish to protect their mobile user base should seriously consider server-based filtering for both email and Web content on mobile devices. Currently, it is difficult–to nearly impossible–to verify the authenticity of email messages and the destination of hyperlinks on many common smartphones. ...