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

Account manager


In the context of storing sensitive data, storing passwords or authentication tokens is an important aspect. Consider applications such as Google Mail, Twitter, and Facebook, which lets users log in. Other applications work with an authentication token as used by identity protocols such as OAuth2.

Android provides the android.accounts.AccountManager class as a centralized repository for storing user credentials. An application can choose to use its own pluggable authenticator to handle account authentication. From storing the username to identity information to creating your custom account manager, Android's AccountManager is a powerful utility.


The AccountManager class functions are permissions protected so that your application will have to request for android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS to access the list of accounts stored on it and android.permission.ACCOUNT_MANAGER for OAuth2.

Each account is in a namespace format. For example, a Google account uses com.google and a Twitter...