MixVM - An Approach to Service Isolation and Data Protection in Mobile Context-Sensitive Applications

Context-aware applications provide the user the ability to find and utilize services that are tailored to his current situation. Approaches, which support dynamic loading of the different elements of a mobile application, e.g., context sensors, adapted input and output components, or the business logic required for the use of location-based services provide an ecosphere for the development of mobile and context-sensitive applications. Downloading and installing of components from unknown third-parties lead to a trust problem, especially if context information that also includes private data is used. In this paper, we present an approach which supports service isolation and data protection in mobile and context sensitive applications. It is based on utilization of an inner virtual machine that runs inside the regular Java virtual machine and executes untrusted code.