SECURING MOBILE PHONES IN THE EVOLVING MOBILE ECOSYSTEM

∗Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. The revolution of mobile phone industry has been altering our life and business practices over the past few decades. Driven by user demands and technological advancement, we now experience rich mobile phone applications and sophisticated cellular services ranging from mobile payment, stock trading, to social networking, vehicle tracking to in-car control. As more players joining the community, this mobile phone environment has transformed into a complex network of interacting companies, known as mobile ecosystem. Unfortunately, this opening and converging mobile ecosystem has brought in more opportunities for more attacks on mobile phones, a key element of the system. This dissertation aims to achieve mobile phone security. We reveal two main chal-lenges that we need to overcome, namely developing a clear definition of secure phones, and building security infrastructure that imposes such definition on the phones. We also identify three key elements that contribute to the fidelity of mobile phones, namely, mobile phone platforms, mobile phone applications, and mobile content. Throughou