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 (12 chapters)
11
Index

Application level permissions

There are two ways to apply permissions to the entire application. In the first case, an application declares what permissions the application requires to function properly. So, an application that will be sending out SMS will declare such permission in the manifest file. In the second case, the application can declare what permissions other applications trying to interact with this application should have. For example, an application can declare that any application that wants to interact with one of its components should have permissions to access the camera. Both these kinds of permissions have to be declared in the manifest file. Let us go through them one by one.

This <uses-permission> tag is declared inside <manifest> and declares what permissions the application requests to function properly. The syntax of the tag is the following:

<uses-permission android:name=" " />

The user, when downloading the application, has to accept...