Android DataCollector App (with RemoteController)

This folder contains the source code of the Anroid apps used for data collection (audio, sensor data, WiFi and BLE beacons) in the paper "Perils of Zero-Interaction Security in the Internet of Things", by Mikhail Fomichev, Max Maass, Lars Almon, Alejandro Molina, Matthias Hollick, in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, vol. 3, Issue 1, 2019.

The DataController app contains the core data collection functionality. The data collection can either be started by pressing a button in DataController (RECOMMENDED) or via the remote app (RemoteController) to which a target sensing device needs to connect to.

Note: While we provide the source code for the RemoteController, we do not recommend using it in combination with DataController to start it remotely (start the DataController by pressing a button)—with this setup we experienced some unexpected errors, jeopardizing reliable data collection.

In our experimetns we used Samsung Galaxy S6 phones with Android 7.0 to collect the following sensor modalities (The DataController app was also tested with Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P both with Android 8.1.0):

Hardware	Sensors	Sampling rate	Comments
Galaxy S6	Barometric pressure (hPa), luminosity (lux); movement -> accelerometer (m/s^2), gyroscope (deg/s), magnetometer (uT)	5 Hz / 50 Hz	5 Hz for pressure and lux, 50 Hz for movement sensors
Galaxy S6	Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and WiFi beacons	0.1 Hz	Scan visible BLE and WiFi access points (APs) for 10 seconds
Galaxy S6	Raw audio stream	16 kHz	The audio is stored in a *.WAV file

Getting Started

Requirements

minSdkVersion 21 
targetSdkVersion 27 
Android version >= Android 5.0

Setting up the Environment

1. Download and install Android Studio (https://developer.android.com/studio/).
2. Make sure to install the Android SDK with the minimum SDK version 21.
3. Import the Project to Android Studio: File -> Open, and then select the Android app you wish to install, i.e., DataCollector or RemoteController.
4. The DataCollector app supports Crashlytics, which can be included (https://fabric.io/kits/android/crashlytics/install) and can also be linked to Google's firebase.
5. Build the project by pressing the corresponding button or using Build -> make Project.

Running DataCollector App

Before running the app make sure that the phone has Internet connection (required for the NTF sync):

1. Make sure your phone has a debugging mode enabled and connect it to the computer.
2. Start the app by pressing the corresponding button or hitting Shift+F10 to select your device, install the DataCollector.
3. Accept all permissions -> Data read/write, Audio recording, Bluetooth, Locations (required for performing WiFi scans).
4. The app settings are entered by clicking a 3-dot symbol in the upper right corner, the Default Settings are:
   • All sensors are set to their Max sampling rates permitted by the phone.
   • BLE, WiFi and audio collection is disabled.
   • The option to launch the app via RemoteController is disabled.
   • (Optional) Here you can set the required sampling rates for different sensors.
5. The data collection is started/stopped by pressing the START/STOP button in the center of the screen.

Notes:

• Each time the START/STOP button is pressed a new folder with recorded sensor data is created (non-destructive to previously collected data).
• You can lock the screen on the phone while the data collection is running. However, on Samsung Glaxy S6 the app MUST NOT be put in the background as the OS will eventually kill the app!

Running RemoteController App

To start DataCollector via RemoteController two Android phones are required (NOT RECOMMENDED, see above):

1. Start the DataCollector app on the first phone as described above.
2. Open the settings in DataCollector and enable Remote control.
3. Open the RemoteController Project in Android Studio.
4. Connect the second phone (must be in a debugging mode) to your computer.
5. Press the green arrow button or hit Shift+F10 to select your device, install the RemoteController.
6. Make sure that both phones are in the same network.
7. In the DataCollector app (first phone) press the CONNECT button and wait for both phones to establish a connection.
8. If the connection is successful the first phone will pop up in the RemoteController (running on the second phone) and in the DataCollector (running on the first phone) the status will change to CONNECTED.
9. In the RemoteController set up the time at which the DataCollector should start recording, as well as the duration of the data collection.
10. After the start time and duration have been set, press the START button in the RemoteController to transimt these paramters to the DataCollector, which displays the received start time and data collection duration.
11. The DataCollector will automatically start the data collection at the specified start time and stop it after the specified duration.

Data Structure

The collected data is stored on the phone running the DataCollector app in the following location internalStorage/SensorData/Timestamp:

Timestamp/              # Root folder of the sensor data, corresponds the start time of data collection
  + audio/
  | + XX.wav            # Encoded audio data, XX is the sensor number, e.g., 01, 02, etc. set in the DataCollector app
  | + audio.time        # Time when the audio started
  + ble/
  | + ble.txt           # BLE data
  + sensors/
  | + accData.txt       # Accelerometer data
  | + barData.txt       # Barometric data
  | + gyrData.txt       # Gyroscope data
  | + luxData.txt       # Lluminosity data
  | + magData.txt       # Magnetometer data
  + wifi/
    + wifi.txt          # WiFi data

Authors

Timm Lippert and Mikhail Fomichev

License

The code is licensed under the GNU GPLv3. See LICENSE.txt for details.