Towards a mobile security & privacy simulator

The proliferation and capabilities of mobile, networked devices is increasing rapidly and with this trend new threats to security and privacy are emerging at an alarming rate. The new threats are difficult to study and prepare for, since field studies are costly, limited in scope and have significant security and privacy issues of their own. In this paper, we present a Mobile Security & Privacy Simulator, which enables the simulation of mobile entities and their environment to study security and privacy related issues. Entities act and interact with one another, influenced by personal and world context. Simulation can be used to evaluate privacy threats and countermeasures by numerical analysis and by visualization to better grasp the implications of new devices, services and the threats against them. We also present a brief study on the effects of mono-culture in mobile operating systems when faced with the epidemic spread of mobile malware, which shows how future mobile networks can reach total infection within a short time.