Book Image

Android Application Security Essentials

By : Pragati Rai
Book Image

Android Application Security Essentials

By: Pragati Rai

Overview of this book

In today's techno-savvy world, more and more parts of our lives are going digital, and all this information is accessible anytime and anywhere using mobile devices. It is of the utmost importance that you understand and implement security in your apps that will reduce the likelihood of hazards that will wreck your users' experience. "Android Application Security Essentials" takes a deep look into Android security from kernel to the application level, with practical hands-on examples, illustrations, and everyday use cases. This book will show you how to overcome the challenge of getting the security of your applications right. "Android Application Security Essentials" will show you how to secure your Android applications and data. It will equip you with tricks and tips that will come in handy as you develop your applications.We will start by learning the overall security architecture of the Android stack. Securing components with permissions, defining security in a manifest file, cryptographic algorithms and protocols on the Android stack, secure storage, security focused testing, and protecting enterprise data on your device is then also discussed in detail. You will also learn how to be security-aware when integrating newer technologies like NFC and mobile payments into your Android applications. At the end of this book, you will understand Android security at the system level all the way to the nitty-gritty details of application security for securing your Android applications.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Android Application Security Essentials
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Component level permissions


All Android components can be secured using permissions. The following figure illustrates this concept:

Let's talk about permission declaration and enforcement for each component.

Activity

Any Activity can be secured by permission, by calling out the permission in Activity declaration in the <activity> tag. For example, the Activity OrderActivity with a custom permission com.example.project.ORDER_BOOK will be declared as follows. Any component that tries to launch OrderActivity needs to have this custom permission.

<activity android:name=".OrderActivity" android:permission="com.example.project.ORDER_BOOK" android:exported="false"/>

In case of activities, permission enforcement happens when launching the Activity, by using Context.startActivity() and Context.startActivityForResult(). In case the launching component does not have appropriate permissions, a SecurityException is thrown.

Service

Any Service can be protected using permission by listing out the...