If there is one thing that the 20th Century can vouch for as far as technology is concerned, smart devices are rapidly adventuring. These devices are well-equipped to perform several complicated and straightforward functions in the blink of an eye. One operating system that has gained a lot of momentum in recent years and has occupied a significant portion of this niche is Android.
The Android operating system has lots of built-in security features, such as application sandboxing, protection against buffer and integer overflow attacks, and segregated memory areas for program instructions and data. If you are developing an app, however, it is your responsibility to make it secure and protect the privacy of your users.
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How Does Android Security Work?
There is no denying the fact that the utility of a smart device is multi-faceted. Other than the normal function of setting up communication with others, it is also used to make financial transactions and store sensitive data.
The developers of Android were aware of this requirement. They have always coded their operating system so that security and privacy are maintained.
Certain in-built features like sandboxing and prevention of overflow attacks have been effective against the simple applications that run on Android.
These applications should not be using any networking or file-sharing features for that. However, if some applications require the use of the aspects above, additional security becomes necessary.
How to Secure an Android App
In this article, I’m going to list some of the best practices you can follow to build a secure Android app that doesn’t leak data or permissions and is, in general, less vulnerable to malicious apps that might be installed on the user’s device.
1. Use Internal Storage for Sensitive Data
If you ask any person associated with this particular field, they will tell you that any application’s internal storage memory is always well-encrypted and protected.
It uses the default private mode when storing the data related to it. Any other application that might be present in the smart device cannot easily access this information.
If you voluntarily want to put some important data related to an Internal Storage application, all you have to do is find out the path for it. Once that is done, you can easily reference the files into this type of storage and make it completely inaccessible to any third-party application.
2. Encrypt the Data Properly
The internal storage capacity of an Android device is often limited. Therefore, at times, you might have no choice but to store sensitive data on external storage media, such as a removable SD card.
If you store data on an external storage medium then a third-party app can directly access the data. So, it is important to store the data in an encrypted format.
Advanced Encryption Standard is one of the standard tools used for the encryption of external storage data. The Android SDK does have the provision for encrypting and then decrypting the data in the external storage. However, there is a chance that it becomes too confusing for the developer as a whole.
Therefore, using third-party libraries can solve this issue. Conceal Library by Facebook is one such third-party library that is instrumental for easy encryption of data.
3. Use Intents for Inter-Process Communication
As a programmer, it might sometimes become necessary to communicate with other device applications for optimal performance. Even people with a lot of experience make the mistake of using pipes and named sockets to establish this communication.
However, this is not a very secure method, and it can be attacked by users with malicious intentions easily. In this situation, it is better to use Intents for Inter-Process Communication. Using it, you can even transfer the data to a particular component of the application by specifying it in the path conveniently.
Intent also has the provision of contacting and sending messages to multiple apps at one time. It is known as broadcasting. Since many applications can gain access to it, the message is not very secure. There is a provision to improve this security feature as well by customization and providing an access key. It ensures that only the apps that have the required permission can look into it. It is important if you are looking to send information that is sensitive through Intent to several applications.
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4. Use GCM
Google Cloud Messaging has proven to be a boon for Android as it has made all communications across applications and devices secure.
The alternative that was being used for all these years, known as SMS, has been prone to a lot of threats and attacks from different avenues. This was due to the simple fact that any transmission that took place through SMS was not encrypted.
On the other hand, GCM has gone one step further by encrypting the communication and regularly authenticating it using API from the user’s side. If you are an application developer on an Android platform and still use SMS instead of GCM, it is high time that you give the necessary switch.
5. Validate User Input
One of the important features of the Android Operating System is the validation of the user’s inputs. It ensures that the code runs without any problem in the embedded engines.
If any interaction takes place with the SQL database and it is not sanitized properly, chances are high that some attack injected with SQL only takes place. Android has to be wary of this threat and take proactive measures to prevent it from disrupting the coding as a whole.
6. Use HTTPS
One of the major reasons for the connectivity of the applications has become enhanced these days is due to the use of efficient servers. The framework of the apps has to keep communicating with these servers to execute its functions.
Generally, an HTTP connection is used for it and it also gives the illusion of being secure. However, if a general hotspot or public WiFi is used to set up for communication, a significant threat can occur. It is common to find public WiFi these days and if you connect to it and someone has any bad intent, they can easily misconfigure your application so that it malfunctions.
The exploitation of the HTTP traffic is mainly done by the injection of ads. This is a classic example of hacking. To prevent this from happening, you should ensure that a certified security provider secures the server used by the application. DigiCert is one such method of doing so.
Moreover, if there is a threat that some important data can get exposed and transferred as cleartext, which is easily hackable, opt for nogotofail to prevent it. It is a tool developed by Google itself and is prompt enough to find such mistakes easily.
Also Read: 5 Ways to Protect Your Phone’s Portable Hotspot
7. Don’t Ask For Personal Data
The importance of data security and privacy has come to the forefront in recent times. Different countries and governments have implemented many laws for the same. Theft or loss of personal data can land the application in a lot of trouble. There are two ways to deal with it. Either do not ask for any personal data of the user for any purpose of the application or have a very secure connection to ensure that no issues occur.
In case personal information is a necessity and cannot be avoided, it is recommended to use the Google Identity Platform. It directly links the details of the application with your Google account and makes it relatively safer. If that is also not possible, and the users’ credentials have to be handled by you, you can opt to use hashes to secure the connection. Android SDK can be used for useful hashing and is preferred by many developers.
8. ProGuard Should Be Used Before Publishing
Finally, the source code for any application is an integral part of the development of any application. In case it is hacked or compromised by an attacker, its implications can be pretty damaging.
Therefore, the source code must be kept secure at all costs to not fall into the wrong hands. ProGuard is an ideal method of doing so. You can even use customization to make the security more strong.
Conclusion
I hope most of your doubt regarding how to secure an Android app is answered. These security majors are only applicable only if you’re developing your android app using Android SDK. However, if you use the Native Development Kit for Android then you have to be more careful while developing the app.
