Mobile devices such as smartphones and Internet tablets have achieved computing and networking capabilities comparable to traditional personal computers. An explosion of mobile devices being used for work has also become a source of pain for adopting users and organizations. For example, the widespread presence of information-stealing applications raises substantial security and privacy concerns. Recently, there has been an explosion of the Internet of things which will make us increasingly rely on intelligent, interconnected devices in every aspect of our lives. Examples include smart systems, smart vehicles, and wearable devices such as smart watches and digital glasses. In such always connected environment, mobile devices still will be an essential gateway from the personal point of view and crosslinking of things offers new possibilities to influence business intelligence and to exchange various data items. This may also lead to a variety of new potential risks concerning both security and privacy, which must be considered. Thus, it is tremendously essential to develop security technologies for mobile system, in particular, dealing with mobile devices.

Hence, the main motivation for this special issue is to bring together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and hardware and software developers of mobile systems to explore the latest understanding and advances in the security and privacy for mobile devices, applications, and systems. The aim of this special issue is to provide the insight into the discussion of the major research challenges and achievements in various topics of interest.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Mobile device/hardware security
• Mobile OS/middleware security
• Mobile application security
• Mobile web security
• Mobile security for the Internet of things
• Authenticating users to mobile devices and services
• Usable security
• Privacy
• Rogue application detection and recovery
• Vulnerability detection and remediation
• Secure application development