Duvel: Enabling Context-driven, Multi-profile Apps on Android through Storage Sandboxing
Pages 31 - 36
Abstract
We present a novel technique to achieve a dynamic, context-driven, multiple-profile manager for individual apps on stock Android. Our system allows users to use a single app with any number of accounts, allows incognito modes for every app, and allows a context-driven dynamic switching between the profiles (e.g., based on geolocation). Our technique achieves this by creating a sandboxed storage environment within each app through byte-code instrumentation. This allows for a clean separation of profile specific data and allows users to run personal and business accounts on the same phone, or sandbox an app in incognito mode without sharing any data between them. We present many more use cases where our solution can be used to improve user experience on mobile systems. In contrast to many of the existing solutions, our solution eliminates any modifications to the platform, does not require any special SDK to develop apps, and can use a context-driven policy to dynamically switch between profiles. We realize a storage sandbox environment called Duvel on Android, based on our previous work BlueMountain, and show how Duvel can enable using multiple accounts and incognito mode in popular apps.
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Published In
June 2018
65 pages
ISBN:9781450358378
DOI:10.1145/3213344
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Published: 10 June 2018
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June 10 - 15, 2018
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