Review of Security Challenges in Mobile Cloud Computing Applications

Mobiles and smartphones recently store huge amounts of valuable information such as personal information, financial transactions, social applications, and call records. These devices allow the transmission of data, by voice, text, or video, at anytime and everywhere. They enable easy access to the required information. The huge development of mobile devices has introduced the ability to use new and advanced applications. In several scenarios, the advanced applications require a connection to the cloud services. This affects the general environment, infrastructure, and security challenges of mobile applications. In this paper, we mainly aim to investigate the security challenges and issues of Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) applications. First, we discuss the most popular applications of MCC. Then, we present an adversary and threat model that determines the main security challenges and issues in these applications. We summarize some security techniques, that have been used to tackle these challenges and determine their main requirements. Finally, clear recommendations regarding the directions and required research in this field are given in the paper.