Side channel analysis on android smartphones

In recent years, smartphones have become inseparable components of people's daily life. However, the great popularity of smartphones causes some security problems. For example, users may store their contact lists, passwords and other credentials in their smartphones. In addition to various features, smartphones also have various motion sensors like accelerometer and gyroscope. Therefore, number of malwares focused on smartphones goes up while capabilities of smartphones increase. It is well-known fact that Android is the leader of smartphone market. This unluckily leads attackers to the Android platform. Furthermore, attackers use motion sensors as a side-channel information to obtain user's private data. There are several studies in the literature which show how motion sensors can be used as a side-channel. In this study, the main object is to determine user's age interval by using accelerometer sensor as a side-channel. We show that by analyzing user's tap event on the touchscreen we can determine whether the user is child or adult. This is actually our great contribution to the literature because this information may give attackers extra avenues for their malicious activities.