Slyware Prevention: Threat of Websites Inducing Accidental Taps and Countermeasures

Abstract

Malicious software is defined as malware but in recent years, the amount of software that behaves maliciously while still acting legally has been increasing. We propose that this type of software should be referred to as “slyware.” Typical examples of slyware are implemented as smartphone websites with hyperlinks (links) that are designed to induce the visitor to make accidental taps, which we call “mistap-slyware.” Mistap-slyware can initiate the performance of illegal or dishonest acts, although mistap-slyware is not actually illegal. Thus, we propose a cancelable transition method as a countermeasure. In the proposed method, a link will start blinking when it is tapped. If the user taps the link again, then moving to the page is canceled; otherwise, moving to the page occurs after a few seconds. We evaluated the proposed method and an existing method in terms of their usability and safety.