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Screen readers, voice-to-text, and other accessibility features have enabled people with disabilities to use smartphones. Yet these same features make the phones more accessible to hackers, too.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a new tool, Detector of Victim-specific Accessibility (DVa), that can check for malware. DVa runs on the cloud to check the phone for this malware, then sends the user a report of its findings that shows which apps are malware and how to delete them. It will also tell them which victim apps the malware was targeting and how to contact those companies to check for damages. DVa also sends a report to Google, so the company can attempt to eradicate this malware from apps.

"As we continue to design systems that are more and more accessible, we also need security experts in the room," said Brendan Saltaformaggio, an associate professor in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP) and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Because if we don't, they're going to get abused by hackers."

Modeling malware

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