Android Hacker's Handbook

Joshua J. Drake, Zach Lanier, Collin Mulliner, Pau Oliva Fora, Stephen A. Ridley, Georg Wicherski

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118922255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Ciberseguridad

The first comprehensive guide to discovering and preventing attacks on the Android OS

As the Android operating system continues to increase its share of the smartphone market, smartphone hacking remains a growing threat. Written by experts who rank among the world's foremost Android security researchers, this book presents vulnerability discovery, analysis, and exploitation tools for the good guys. Following a detailed explanation of how the Android OS works and its overall security architecture, the authors examine how vulnerabilities can be discovered and exploits developed for various system components, preparing you to defend against them.

If you are a mobile device administrator, security researcher, Android app developer, or consultant responsible for evaluating Android security, you will find this guide is essential to your toolbox.

• A crack team of leading Android security researchers explain Android security risks, security design and architecture, rooting, fuzz testing, and vulnerability analysis
• Covers Android application building blocks and security as well as debugging and auditing Android apps
• Prepares mobile device administrators, security researchers, Android app developers, and security consultants to defend Android systems against attack

Android Hacker's Handbook is the first comprehensive resource for IT professionals charged with smartphone security.

Chapter 1
Looking at the Ecosystem

The word Android is used correctly in many contexts. Although the word still can refer to a humanoid robot, Android has come to mean much more than that in the last decade. In the mobile space, it refers to a company, an operating system, an open source project, and a development community. Some people even call mobile devices Androids. In short, an entire ecosystem surrounds the now wildly popular mobile operating system.

This chapter looks closely at the composition and health of the Android ecosystem. First you find out how Android became what it is today. Then the chapter breaks down the ecosystem stakeholders into groups in order to help you understand their roles and motivations. Finally, the chapter discusses the complex relationships within the ecosystem that give rise to several important issues that affect security.

Understanding Android's Roots

Android did not become the world's most popular mobile operating system overnight. The last decade has been a long journey with many bumps in the road. This section recounts how Android became what it is today and begins looking at what makes the Android ecosystem tick.

Company History

Android began as Android, Inc., a company founded by Andy Rubin, Chris White, Nick Sears, and Rich Miner in October 2003. They focused on creating mobile devices that were able to take into account location information and user preferences. After successfully navigating market demand and financial difficulties, Google acquired Android, Inc., in August 2005. During the period following, Google began building partnerships with hardware, software, and telecommunications companies with the intent of entering the mobile market.

In November 2007, the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) was announced. This consortium of companies, which included 34 founding members led by Google, shares a commitment to openness. In addition, it aims to accelerate mobile platform innovation and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. The OHA has since grown to 84 members at the time this book was published. Members represent all parts of the mobile ecosystem, including mobile operators, handset manufacturers, semiconductor companies, software companies, and more. You can find the full list of members on the OHA website at www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_members.html.

With the OHA in place, Google announced its first mobile product, Android. However, Google still did not bring any devices running Android to the market. Finally, after a total of five years, Android was made available to the general public in October 2008. The release of the first publicly available Android phone, the HTC G1, marked the beginning of an era.

Version History

Before the first commercial version of Android, the operating system had Alpha and Beta releases. The Alpha releases where available only to Google and OHA members, and they were codenamed after popular robots Astro Boy, Bender, and R2-D2. Android Beta was released on November 5, 2007, which is the date that is popularly considered the Android birthday.

The first commercial version, version 1.0, was released on September 23, 2008, and the next release, version 1.1, was available on February 9, 2009. Those were the only two releases that did not have a naming convention for their codename. Starting with Android 1.5, which was released on April 30, 2009, the major versions' code names were ordered alphabetically with the names of tasty treats. Version 1.5 was code named Cupcake. Figure 1.1 shows all commercial Android versions, with their respective release dates and code names.

Figure 1.1 Android releases

In the same way that Android releases are code-named, individual builds are identified with a short build code, as explained on the Code Names, Tags, and Build Numbers page at http://source.android.com/source/build-numbers.html. For example, take the build number JOP40D. The first letter represents the code name of the Android release (J is Jelly Bean). The second letter identifies the code branch from which the build was made, though its precise meaning varies from one build to the next. The third letter and subsequent two digits comprise a date code. The letter represents the quarter, starting from A, which means the first quarter of 2009. In the example, P represents the fourth quarter of 2012. The two digits signify days from the start of the quarter. In the example, P40 is November 10, 2012. The final letter differentiates individual versions for the same date, again starting with A. The first builds for a particular date, signified with A, don't usually use this letter.

Examining the Device Pool

As Android has grown, so has the number of devices based on the operating system. In the past few years, Android has been slowly branching out from the typical smartphone and tablet market, finding its way into the most unlikely of places. Devices such as smart watches, television accessories, game consoles, ovens, satellites sent to space, and the new Google Glass (a wearable device with a head-mounted display) are powered by Android. The automotive industry is beginning to use Android as an infotainment platform in vehicles. The operating system is also beginning to make a strong foothold in the embedded Linux space as an appealing alternative for embedded developers. All of these facts make the Android device pool an extremely diverse place.

You can obtain Android devices from many retail outlets worldwide. Currently, most mobile subscribers get subsidized devices through their mobile carriers. Carriers provide these subsidies under the terms of a contract for voice and data services. Those who do not want to be tied to a carrier can also purchase Android devices in consumer electronics stores or online. In some countries, Google sells their Nexus line of Android devices in their online store, Google Play.

Google Nexus

Nexus devices are Google's flagship line of devices, consisting mostly of smartphones and tablets. Each device is produced by a different original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in a close partnership with Google. They are sold SIM-unlocked, which makes switching carriers and traveling easy, through Google Play directly by Google. To date, Google has worked in cooperation with HTC, Samsung, LG, and ASUS to create Nexus smartphones and tablets. Figure 1.2 shows some of the Nexus devices released in recent years.

Figure 1.2 Google Nexus devices

Nexus devices are meant to be the reference platform for new Android versions. As such, Nexus devices are updated directly by Google soon after a new Android version is released. These devices serve as an open platform for developers. They have unlockable boot loaders that allow flashing custom Android builds and are supported by the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Google also provides factory images, which are binary firmware images that can be flashed to return the device to the original, unmodified state.

Another benefit of Nexus devices is that they offer what is commonly referred to as a pure Google experience. This means that the user interface has not been modified. Instead, these devices offer the stock interface found in vanilla Android as compiled from AOSP. This also includes Google's proprietary apps such as Google Now, Gmail, Google Play, Google Drive, Hangouts, and more.

Market Share

Smartphone market share statistics vary from one source to another. Some sources include ComScore, Kantar, IDC, and Strategy Analytics. An overall look at the data from these sources shows that Android's market share is on the rise in a large proportion of countries. According to a report released by Goldman Sachs, Android was the number one player in the entire global computing market at the end of 2012. StatCounter's GlobalStats, available at http://gs.statcounter.com/, show that Android is currently the number one player in the mobile operating system market, with 41.3 percent worldwide as of November 2013. Despite these small variations, all sources seem to agree that Android is the dominating mobile operating system.

Release Adoption

Not all Android devices run the same Android version. Google regularly publishes a dashboard showing the relative percentage of devices running a given version of Android. This information is based on statistics gathered from visits to Google Play, which is present on all approved devices. The most up-to-date version of this dashboard is available at http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/. Additionally, Wikipedia contains a chart showing dashboard data aggregated over time. Figure 1.3 depicts the chart as of this writing, which includes data from December 2009 to February 2013.

Figure 1.3 Android historical version distribution

Source: fjmustak (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Android_historical_version_distribution.png

As shown, new versions of Android have a relatively slow adoption rate. It takes in excess of one year to get a new version running on 90 percent of devices. You can read more about this issue and other challenges facing Android in the “Grasping Ecosystem Complexities” section later in this chapter.

Open Source, Mostly

AOSP is the manifestation of Google and the OHA members' commitment to openness. At its foundation, the Android operating system is built upon many different open source components. This includes numerous libraries, the Linux kernel, a complete user interface, applications, and more. All of these software components have an Open Source Initiative (OSI)–approved license. Most of the Android source is released under version 2.0 of the Apache Software License that you can find at apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0. Some outliers do exist, mainly consisting on upstream projects, which are external open source projects on which Android depends. Two examples are the Linux kernel code that is licensed under GPLv2 and the WebKit project that uses a BSD-style license. The AOSP source repository brings all of these projects together in one place.

Although the vast majority of the Android stack is open source, the resulting consumer device...