arXiv subjects

Bakheet Aljedaani

Publications and source records attributed to Bakheet Aljedaani.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Ecosystem-Driven Privacy Exposure in Mobile Gaming Apps: A Configuration-Aware Empirical Analysis

Mobile gaming apps increasingly rely on third-party Software Development Kits SDKs for advertising, analytics, attribution, and user engagement, potentially introducing privacy exposure beyond traditional permission based risks. Existing studies have largely focused on permissions or isolated tracking behaviors, providing only a partial understanding of privacy exposure in modern mobile ecosystems. This study presents a configuration aware empirical assessment of privacy exposure in Android mobile gaming apps by examining permissions, manifest level configurations, exported components, and SDK ecosystem complexity across children-oriented and general-audience games. A systematic static analysis was conducted on 41 widely deployed Android mobile gaming apps collected from the Google Play ecosystem. The analysis incorporated SDK categorisation and statistical evaluation using Spearman correlation, Mann Whitney U, and Chi square testing. The results revealed that privacy exposure is strongly associated with ecosystem-level architectural decisions rather than permission requests alone. Child-oriented games frequently demonstrated exposure conditions comparable to general-audience apps despite sometimes requesting fewer sensitive permissions. Furthermore, larger and more diverse SDK ecosystems were significantly associated with elevated privacy exposure levels, while advertising-oriented SDKs showed strong association with high exposure classifications. These findings highlight the limitations of permission-centric assessment approaches and emphasize the importance of configuration aware and ecosystem-aware privacy evaluation methodologies for modern mobile software systems.

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arXiv2026

Beyond Permissions: A Configuration-Aware Empirical Assessment of Privacy Exposure in Children-Oriented and General-Audience Mobile Gaming Apps

Mobile gaming applications (apps) have become increasingly pervasive, including a growing number of games designed for children. Despite their popularity, these apps often integrate complex analytics, advertising, and attribution infrastructures that may introduce privacy and security risks. Existing research has primarily focused on tracking behaviors or monetization models, leaving configuration-level privacy exposure and children-oriented apps underexplored. In this study, we conducted a comparative static analysis of Android mobile games to investigate privacy and security risks beyond permission usage. The analysis follows a three-phase methodology comprising (i) designing study protocol, (ii) Android Package Kit (APK) collection and static inspection, and (iii) data analysis. We examined permissions, manifest-level configuration properties (e.g., backup settings, cleartext network traffic, and exported components), and embedded third-party Software Development Kit (SDK) ecosystems across children-oriented and general-audience mobile games. The extracted indicators are synthesized into qualitative privacy-risk categories to support comparative reporting. The results showed that while children-oriented games often request fewer permissions, they frequently exhibit configuration-level risks and embed third-party tracking SDKs similar to general-audience games. Architectural and configuration decisions play a critical role in shaping privacy risks, particularly for apps targeting children. This study contributes a holistic static assessment of privacy exposure in mobile games and provides actionable insights for developers, platform providers, and researchers seeking to improve privacy-by-design practices in mobile applications.

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arXiv2026

An Empirical Analysis of Google Play Data Safety Disclosures: A Consistency Study of Privacy Indicators in Mobile Gaming Apps

The Google Play marketplace has introduced the Data Safety section to improve transparency regarding how mobile applications (apps) collect, share, and protect user data. This mechanism requires developers to disclose privacy and security-related practices. However, the reliability of these disclosures remains dependent on developer self-reporting, raising concerns about their accuracy. This study investigates the consistency between developer-reported Data Safety disclosures and observable privacy indicators extracted from Android Application Packages (APKs). An empirical analysis was conducted on a dataset of 41 mobile gaming apps. A static analysis approach was used to extract key privacy indicators from APK files, including device IDs, data sharing, personal information access, and location access. These indicators were systematically compared with the corresponding disclosures reported in the Google Play Data Safety labels using a structured consistency evaluation framework. The results revealed varying levels of agreement across privacy categories. Device ID disclosures demonstrated relatively high consistency (87.8%), whereas other indicators exhibited substantial mismatches. Location-related disclosures showed the highest inconsistency rate (56.1%), followed by personal information and data sharing. Comparative analysis between children-oriented and general-audience apps revealed similar mismatch patterns. Also, Chi-square statistical tests indicate that these differences are not statistically significant, suggesting that disclosure inconsistencies are not associated with app category but instead reflect broader ecosystem-level challenges. These findings highlight limitations in the reliability of current marketplace transparency mechanisms and emphasize the need for improved validation and verification approaches to ensure accurate privacy reporting in mobile app ecosystems.

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arXiv2025

Quantum Computing as a Service -- a Software Engineering Perspective

Quantum systems have started to emerge as a disruptive technology and enabling platforms - exploiting the principles of quantum mechanics via programmable quantum bits (QuBits) - to achieve quantum supremacy in computing. Academic research, industrial projects (e.g., Amazon Braket, IBM Qiskit), and consortiums like 'Quantum Flagship' are striving to develop practically capable and commercially viable quantum computing (QC) systems and technologies. Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS) is viewed as a solution attuned to the philosophy of service-orientation that can offer QC resources and platforms, as utility computing, to individuals and organisations who do not own quantum computers. This research investigates a process-centric and architecture-driven approach to offer a software engineering perspective on enabling QCaaS - a.k.a quantum service-orientation. We employed a two-phase research method comprising (a) a systematic mapping study and (b) an architecture-based development, first to identify the phases of the quantum service development life cycle and subsequently to integrate these phases into a reference architecture that supports QCaaS. The SMS process retrieved a collection of potentially relevant research literature and based on a multi-step selection and qualitative assessment, we selected 41 peer-reviewed studies to answer three RQs. The RQs investigate (i) demographic details in terms of frequency, types, and trends of research, (ii) phases of quantum service development lifecycle to derive a reference architecture for conception, modeling, assembly, and deployment of services, and (iii) The results identify a 4-phased development lifecycle along with quantum significant requirements (QSRs), various modeling notations, catalogue of patterns, programming languages, and deployment platforms that can be integrated in a layered reference architecture to engineer QCaaS.

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arXiv2024

An Exploration Study on Developing Blockchain Systems the Practitioners Perspective

Context: Blockchain-based software (BBS) exploits the concepts and technologies popularized by cryptocurrencies offering decentralized transaction ledgers with immutable content for security-critical and transaction critical systems. Recent research has explored the strategic benefits and technical limitations of BBS in various fields, including cybersecurity, healthcare, education, and financial technologies. Despite growing interest from academia and industry, there is a lack of empirical evidence, leading to an incomplete understanding of the processes, methods, and techniques necessary for systematic BBS development. Objectives: Existing research lacks a consolidated view, particularly empirically driven guidelines based on published evidence and development practices. This study aims to address the gap by consolidating empirical evidence and development practices to derive or leverage existing processes, patterns, and models for designing, implementing, and validating BBS systems. Method: Tied to this knowledge gap, we conducted a two-phase research project. First, a systematic literature review of 58 studies was performed to identify a development process comprising 23 tasks for BBS systems. Second, a survey of 102 blockchain practitioners from 35 countries across six continents was conducted to validate the BBS system development process. Results: Our results revealed a statistically significant difference (p-value <.001) in the importance ratings of 24 out of 26 BBS tasks by our participants. The only two tasks that were not statistically significant were incentive protocol design and granularity design. Conclusion: Our research is among the first to advance understanding on the aspect of development process for blockchain-based systems and helps researchers and practitioners in their quests on challenges and recommendations associated with the development of BBS systems

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arXiv2022

An Empirical Study on Secure Usage of Mobile Health Apps: The Attack Simulation Approach

Mobile applications, mobile apps for short, have proven their usefulness in enhancing service provisioning across a multitude of domains that range from smart healthcare, to mobile commerce, and areas of context sensitive computing. In recent years, a number of empirically grounded, survey-based studies have been conducted to investigate secure development and usage of mHealth apps. However, such studies rely on self reported behaviors documented via interviews or survey questions that lack a practical, i.e. action based approach to monitor and synthesise users actions and behaviors in security critical scenarios. We conducted an empirical study, engaging participants with attack simulation scenarios and analyse their actions, for investigating the security awareness of mHealth app users via action-based research. We simulated some common security attack scenarios in mHealth context and engaged a total of 105 app users to monitor their actions and analyse their behavior. We analysed users data with statistical analysis including reliability and correlations tests, descriptive analysis, and qualitative data analysis. Our results indicate that whilst the minority of our participants perceived access permissions positively, the majority had negative views by indicating that such an app could violate or cost them to lose privacy. Users provide their consent, granting permissions, without a careful review of privacy policies that leads to undesired or malicious access to health critical data. The results also indicated that 73.3% of our participants had denied at least one access permission, and 36% of our participants preferred no authentication method. The study complements existing research on secure usage of mHealth apps, simulates security threats to monitor users actions, and provides empirically grounded guidelines for secure development and usage of mobile health systems.

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arXiv2021

End-Users' Knowledge and Perception about Security of Mobile Health Apps: A Case Study with Two Saudi Arabian mHealth Providers

Mobile health applications (mHealth apps for short) are being increasingly adopted in the healthcare sector, enabling stakeholders such as governments, health units, medics, and patients, to utilize health services in a pervasive manner. Despite having several known benefits, mHealth apps entail significant security and privacy challenges that can lead to data breaches with serious social, legal, and financial consequences. This research presents an empirical investigation about security awareness of end-users of mHealth apps that are available on major mobile platforms, including Android and iOS. We collaborated with two mHealth providers in Saudi Arabia to survey 101 end-users, investigating their security awareness about (i) existing and desired security features, (ii) security related issues, and (iii) methods to improve security knowledge. Findings indicate that majority of the end-users are aware of the existing security features provided by the apps (e.g., restricted app permissions); however, they desire usable security (e.g., biometric authentication) and are concerned about privacy of their health information (e.g., data anonymization). End-users suggested that protocols such as session timeout or Two-factor authentication (2FA) positively impact security but compromise usability of the app. Security-awareness via social media, peer guidance, or training from app providers can increase end-users trust in mHealth apps. This research investigates human-centric knowledge based on empirical evidence and provides a set of guidelines to develop secure and usable mHealth apps.

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arXiv2021

Challenges in Developing Secure Mobile Health Applications, A Systematic Review

Mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) have gained significant popularity over the last few years due to its tremendous benefits, such as lowering healthcare cost and increasing patient awareness. However, the sensitivity of healthcare data makes the security of mHealth apps a serious concern. In this review, we aim to identify and analyse the reported challenges that the developers of mHealth apps face concerning security. Additionally, our study aimed to develop a conceptual framework with the challenges faced by mHealth apps development organization for developing secure apps. The knowledge of such challenges can help to reduce the risk of developing insecure mHealth apps. We followed the Systematic Literature Review method for this review. We selected studies that have been published between January 2008 and October 2020. We selected 32 primary studies using predefined criteria and used thematic analysis method for analysing the extracted data. We identified nine challenges that can affect the development of secure mHealth apps. Such as 1) lack of security guidelines and regulations for developing secure mHealth apps, 2) developers lack of knowledge and expertise for secure mHealth app development, 3) lack of stakeholders involvement during mHealth app development, etc . Based on our analysis, we have presented a conceptual framework which highlights the correlation between the identified challenges. We conclude that our findings can help them identify their weaknesses and improve their security practices. Similarly, mHealth apps developers can identify the challenges they face to develop mHealth apps that do not pose security risks for users. Our review is a step towards providing insights into the development of secure mHealth apps. Our proposed conceptual framework can act as a practice guideline for practitioners to enhance secure mHealth apps development.

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arXiv2020

Security Awareness of End-Users of Mobile Health Applications: An Empirical Study

Mobile systems offer portable and interactive computing, empowering users, to exploit a multitude of context-sensitive services, including mobile healthcare. Mobile health applications (i.e., mHealth apps) are revolutionizing the healthcare sector by enabling stakeholders to produce and consume healthcare services. A widespread adoption of mHealth technologies and rapid increase in mHealth apps entail a critical challenge, i.e., lack of security awareness by end-users regarding health-critical data. This paper presents an empirical study aimed at exploring the security awareness of end-users of mHealth apps. We collaborated with two mHealth providers in Saudi Arabia to gather data from 101 end-users. The results reveal that despite having the required knowledge, end-users lack appropriate behaviour , i.e., reluctance or lack of understanding to adopt security practices, compromising health-critical data with social, legal, and financial consequences. The results emphasize that mHealth providers should ensure security training of end-users (e.g., threat analysis workshops), promote best practices to enforce security (e.g., multi-step authentication), and adopt suitable mHealth apps (e.g., trade-offs for security vs usability). The study provides empirical evidence and a set of guidelines about security awareness of mHealth apps.

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arXiv2020

An Empirical Study on Developing Secure Mobile Health Apps: The Developers Perspective

Mobile apps exploit embedded sensors and wireless connectivity of a device to empower users with portable computations, context-aware communication, and enhanced interaction. Specifically, mobile health apps (mHealth apps for short) are becoming integral part of mobile and pervasive computing to improve the availability and quality of healthcare services. Despite the offered benefits, mHealth apps face a critical challenge, i.e., security of health critical data that is produced and consumed by the app. Several studies have revealed that security specific issues of mHealth apps have not been adequately addressed. The objectives of this study are to empirically (a) investigate the challenges that hinder development of secure mHealth apps, (b) identify practices to develop secure apps, and (c) explore motivating factors that influence secure development. We conducted this study by collecting responses of 97 developers from 25 countries, across 06 continents, working in diverse teams and roles to develop mHealth apps for Android, iOS, and Windows platform. Qualitative analysis of the survey data is based on (i) 8 critical challenges, (ii) taxonomy of best practices to ensure security, and (iii) 6 motivating factors that impact secure mHealth apps. This research provides empirical evidence as practitioners view and guidelines to develop emerging and next generation of secure mHealth apps.

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