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

Public key cryptography


Public key cryptography is a cryptographic system that uses two keys: one for encryption and one for decryption. One of the keys is made public and the other is kept private.

Public key cryptography is most commonly used to target two use cases. One for confidentiality and the other is for authentication. In case of confidentiality, the sender encrypts the message using the receiver's public key and sends it over. Since the private key is in possession of the receiver, the receiver uses the private key to decrypt the message.

In the case of authentication to serve as a digital signature, a sender uses their private key to encrypt the message (in most use cases, it is the hash of the message that is encrypted and not the entire message) and makes it available. Anyone with a public key can access it and be certain that the message comes from the sender.

Both the use cases are shown in the following screenshot:

In the following section, we discuss two common public key cryptography...