International Business Machines Corporation

Lucas Brutschy

Omer Tripp

Marco Pistoia

Pietro Ferrara

A system and method whereby permission is accessed that is to be revoked for an application. The permission involves access to private data of a user via an API of an OS. It is determined, in the application, program point(s) involving access to the private data of the user via the API. For each selected one of the program point(s), code in the application is rewritten to replace a source statement, at the selected program point, that accesses the private data with another statement that allocates a mock object or value based on a type of an actual value returned by the source statement. The mock object or value does not expose the private data of the user. The application with the rewritten code is packaged as an output application able to be subsequently executed by the user, and is output for use by the user.

Fine-grained user control over usages of sensitive system resources having private data with applications in privacy enforcement

A computer implemented method of preserving functionality in a computer program by generating customized mock inputs may include identifying a set of functionalities of the computer program, where a first functionality has a first input, and a second functionality has a second input. The method may also include determining a first and a second constraint respectively on the first and second inputs, where the first constraint defines a set of values of the first input which enables the first functionality, and the second constraint defines a set of values of the second input which enables the second functionality. The method may then include generating a constraint satisfaction problem including the first and second constraints, and determining whether a tuple of mock input values exists that satisfy the constraint satisfaction problem. The method may additionally include providing the tuple to the computer program as the customized mock inputs.

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Zurich, Switzerland

Lucas Brutschy