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

Testing overview


With a wide array of devices of varying capabilities, form factors, and versions, Android is one of the most challenging operating systems to test. Getting the basic functionality and user experience itself is a challenge. The following figure illustrates tests that are usually performed in the context of an Android application development. As Bruce Schneier, a great cryptographer of our times, aptly states, "Security is not a product but a process", so you will notice that I have added security testing to the entire lifecycle of application testing.

Let us spend a little time on what each category, unit testing, integration testing, and system testing means from an Android perspective.

  • Unit testing: In most cases, developers who code the module develop unit tests. Developers should write and unit test their modules before handing off their code to test engineers. The Android SDK comes bundled with instrumentation APIs for unit test. This framework is implemented on JUnit...