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

Chapter 5. Respect Your Users

Now that we have a clear understanding of the Android platform and application security framework and components, let's dive into the most challenging aspect of security: data protection. As I stated before, your credibility as an application developer depends on how securely you handle your users' data. Thus the name of this chapter: Respect Your Users!

This chapter forms the basis for understanding the importance and significance of securing user data. The chapter starts off with a discussion of benchmarks for assessing the security of the data and the CIA triad. Next, we take an example of our bookstore application and run it through the asset, threat, and attack scenarios. We talk about the mobile ecosystem and how different components of this ecosystem affect the security of user data. We will close with a review of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) framework for Android.