Silent Battery Draining Attack against Android Systems by Subverting Doze Mode

Doze mode, which was introduced from Android 6.0 aiming at reducing battery consumption when the device is unused for a long time. This work firstly reveals the internal details of the battery-saving feature, especially about the state transitions. Furthermore, we discover several defects in Android's device drivers associated with doze mode. By exploiting the defects, we implement various proof-of-concept attacks that could drain battery without acquiring any permissions by subverting doze mode. The proposed attacks are silent (hardly discerned by normal users), because they keep hidden when the smartphone is in use, while letting benign applications do battery-intensive work when the smartphone is unused rather than consuming excessive power by the attacks themselves. Google has confirmed that our attacks can reduce battery life. Finally, we discuss how to defend against the proposed attacks.