Risks of Energy-Oriented Attacks on Mobile Devices

Even with the rapid and exponential growth of innovative apps for mobile devices, the capacity and autonomy of their batteries remain limited and unable to keep pace with the high demands imposed by the increasingly energy-hungry new apps. Over the course of this decade, progress in battery technology has plateaued at a certain level, unlike computing powers that have sensibly reached upper ceilings and gained users’ satisfaction. These devices could be vulnerable to a new trend of attacks, that we call Denial of Energy Service (DoES) attacks. This is our vision of an energy-based attack that we present in this paper; it aims to block the apps by cutting the system access to energy, or dissipating it on mobile devices such as smartphones. To our knowledge, no previous studies have been carried out on this subject. Within this context, we will adopt a specific approach aimed at detecting energy efficiency and overheating issues, while mitigating the impact of attacks that seek to excessively drain the device's battery. By combining accurate detection of energy-related problems with appropriate countermeasures, we can prevent and alleviate the detrimental consequences of these attacks on our mobile devices.