LSU CSE Professor Receives NSF Grant for Mobile App Security Research

LSU Computer Science & Engineering Assistant Professor Umar Farooq recently received a nearly $300,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) SaTC CORE award for his groundbreaking research project that tackles a critical challenge in today’s digital age—helping users find mobile apps that meet their needs without compromising their privacy. This competitive award will allow Farooq and his team to develop a novel genre of privacy-aware recommender systems to guide safer app choices.

While traditional recommender systems focus solely on app functionality and popularity, this new system goes a step further incorporating users' privacy preferences, analyzing app data behaviors, and clearly communicating potential privacy risks.

“Mobile apps often silently collect sensitive data like location, contacts, and even text messages,” Farooq, principal investigator on the project, said. “Our system doesn’t just recommend useful apps; it explains what they do behind the scenes and aligns those behaviors with what users actually expect and want in terms of privacy.”

The project employs an innovative three-part approach. The first part is advanced static analysis where novel program slicing methods will assess how apps handle data, especially in user-facing features and critical lifecycle code, highlighting actions users can understand and evaluate. The second part is simulated user interaction via reinforcement learning where a deep reinforcement learning framework will simulate app use under realistic conditions to uncover discrepancies between an app’s description and its actual behavior. The last part is conversational privacy-aware recommendations where an interactive AI-based system will provide users with personalized app suggestions while transparently communicating privacy risks and adapting to user preferences over time.

By combining machine learning, static code analysis, and privacy-centric design, the system will offer a safer, more trustworthy mobile experience and advance users’ understanding of online privacy.

“Mobile apps often silently collect sensitive data like location, contacts, and even text messages. Our system doesn’t just recommend useful apps; it explains what they do behind the scenes and aligns those behaviors with what users actually expect and want in terms of privacy.”

Professor Umar Farooq

This research not only empowers individual users but also has broad implications for the design of responsible AI systems and data ethics in app ecosystems.

“The NSF SaTC CORE Award is one of the most competitive honors in cybersecurity research, and we’re proud of assistant professor Umar Farooq for earning it,” LSU CSE Department Chair Ibrahim Bagilli said. “His achievement elevates LSU’s mission to lead as a premiere university in cybersecurity innovation, research, and education. We are indeed building teams that win.”

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