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This Innovative Practice Work in Progress presents a plugin tool named DroidPatrol. It can be integrated with the Android Studio to perform tainted data flow analysis of mobile applications. Most vulnerabilities should be addressed and fixed during the development phase. Computer users, managers, and developers agree that we need software and systems that are “more secure”. Such efforts require support from both the educational institutions and learning communities to improve software assurance, particularly in writing secure code. Many open source static analysis tools help developers to maintain and clean up the code. However, they are not able to find potential security bugs. Our work is aimed to checking of security issues within Android applications during implementation. We provide an example hands-on lab based on DroidPatrol prototype and share the initial evaluation feedback from a classroom. The initial results show that the plugin based hands-on lab generates interests among learners and has the promise of acting as an intervention tool for secure software development. 

As mobile computing is now becoming more and more popular, the security threats to mobile applications are also growing explosively. Mobile app flaws and security defects could open doors for hackers to break into them and access sensitive information. Most vulnerabilities should be addressed in the early stage of mobile software development. However, many software development professionals lack awareness of the importance of security vulnerability and the necessary security knowledge and skills at the development stage. The combination of the prevalence of mobile devices and the rapid growth of mobile threats has resulted in a shortage of secure software development professionals. Many schools offer mobile app development courses in computing curriculum; however, secure software development is not yet well represented in most schools' computing curriculum. This paper addresses the needs of authentic and active pedagogical learning materials for SSD and challenges of building Secure Software Development (SSD) capacity through effective, engaging, and investigative approaches. In this paper, we present an innovative authentic and active SSD learning approach through a collection of transferrable learning modules with hands-on companion labs based on the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) recommendations. The preliminary feedback from students is positive. Students have gained hands-on real world SSD learning experiences with Android mobile platform and also greatly promoted self-efficacy and confidence in their mobile SSD learning.