Information security and threats in mobile appliances

The rapid development of new technologies in the field of hardware, software and telecommunications allowed the creation of a new mobile device generation (smartphones and tablets) characterized by interesting and attractive features such as touch or multi-touch displays and embedded Operating Systems (OSs). Mobile OSs offer several functional and playful features to end-users by means of mobile applications. Such characteristics led to a worldwide increase in smartphones’ sales, resulting in Android being the world’s best-selling mobile OS. However, due to its popularity, Android is also the first mobile open source OS with a large number of vulnerabilities, cyber-attacks and malicious apps. This paper aims at presenting a review of recent patents, and state of art solutions as well, in the field of information security in mobile devices. Finally, a discussion pointing out the current and future developments in this area is presented.