Development of a Privacy Preserving Liferay Portal document synchronizer for Android
Max Perry Perinato · 2013
In recent years we have seen an overwhelming spread of mobile devices, both for private and corporate use. To push this diffusion were the operating systems iOS by Apple and Android by Google, which currently dominate the market. This year in particular we saw Android reach a share of about 60% of all smartphones sold and about 50% of all tablets. Being these devices well suited for accessing all kinds of information and contents while on-the-go, many enterprises have started developing their own applications to give their employees the ability to access corporate data from anywhere. This however raises the problem of security of sensitive and confidential data, which is considered of great importance in the corporate domain. In this dissertation the problem of protecting data is addressed treating a real world corporate case study: the development of a native Android application (the client) for the synchronization of documents with Liferay Portal (the server), a leading open source web platform for enterprises. This application raises a number of security related issues, including, transferring data from server to client and vice versa, caching of information and off-line access, copying and sharing of data, managing and controlling user permission over each individual information (information rights management), revoking data access to untrusted users, and protecting information from theft or tampering (i.e. rooting) of the mobile device. Some of these problems can be eliminated, whereas many of them represent risks that can only be mitigated. The purpose of this work is to implement a synchronizer able to provide security of confidential data with the highest possible criterion, by harnessing software technologies compatible with the Android platform. Thesis Supervisor: Michele Bugliesi Title: Full Professor & Head of Department