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Article summary:
1. Modern smartphone platforms use permission-based models to protect access to sensitive data and system resources, but apps can still circumvent the permission model.
2. The authors used an instrumented environment to monitor apps' runtime behaviour and network traffic in order to search for evidence of side and covert channels being used by apps.
3. Hundreds of popular apps and third-party SDKs were found to be using side and covert channels to gain unauthorized access to unique identifiers and geolocation data.
Article analysis:
The article is generally trustworthy, as it is written by a team of researchers from reputable universities and research institutes, who have responsibly disclosed their findings to Google and received a bug bounty for their work. The article also provides detailed information about the methodology used in the research, which adds credibility to the claims made in the article.
However, there are some potential biases that should be noted. For example, the authors may have a vested interest in promoting their own research infrastructure, as they make use of it in their study. Additionally, the article does not explore any counterarguments or present both sides equally; instead, it focuses solely on presenting evidence for its claims without considering any opposing views or perspectives. Furthermore, while the authors do note possible risks associated with their findings (e.g., unauthorized access to sensitive data), they do not provide any recommendations or solutions for mitigating these risks. Finally, there is no mention of how long this research has been conducted or how many apps were tested; this information would be useful in assessing the reliability of the results presented in the article.