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

Principles of data security


This section discusses the three principles of data security, namely confidentiality, integrity, and availability, usually called the CIA. Any piece of data stored on the device or server should meet these three attributes for security. Understanding these benchmarks will help us evaluate how secure our data storage solution is. All these three principles are usually expressed as a CIA triad.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is the first pillar of security and it focuses on privacy of data. This principle ensures that private data stays away from prying eyes and is only available to users with appropriate access rights. For example, the private data of an Android application should only be accessible to that application's components or other components with appropriate permission (in case the data is protected using permissions). The Linux operating system sandbox and permissions enforces this confidentiality. In another case, an encrypted file containing sensitive...