Android Security, Pitfalls and Lessons Learned

Liebergeld, Steffen; Lange, Matthias

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01604-7_40

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Unfortunately, real attacks show that DEP and PXN can be fully bypassed by code reuse attack, such as ROP, which leverages existing native code in memory as shellcode payload instead of injecting custom malicious instructions [7,8]. ASLR is supported since Android kernel version 2.6.35 [9]. It allows the kernel to randomize the stack address, heap address, the location of shared libraries and other key memory areas.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, SELinux can be broken through by corrupting the security identifier and security context of process credentials, and real attacks show that mitigation technology can be bypass by other exploit technology, e.g. Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Some researchers suggested static detection methods to recognize privilege escalation attack [10,11], but they all rely on the source code and predefined features.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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PtmxGuard: An Improved Method for Android Kernel to Prevent Privilege Escalation Attack

Kong

Liu

2017

ITM Web Conf.

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Abstract-Vulnerabilities in Android kernel give opportunity for attacker to damage the system. Privilege escalation is one of the most dangerous attacks, as it helps attacker to gain root privilege by exploiting kernel vulnerabilities. Mitigation technologies, static detection methods and dynamic defense methods have been suggested to prevent privilege escalation attack, but they still have some disadvantages. In this paper, we propose an improved method named PtmxGuard to enhance Android kernel and defeat privilege escalation attack. We focus on a typical attack pattern that attacker hijacks the control flow of Android kernel to modify process credentials by corrupting critical global function pointers. PtmxGuard enforces Code Pointer Integrity to Android kernel, checks the accuracy and reliability of those pointers when they're triggered by related system calls, and intercepts the system calls when attack activities are detected. Experiment result demonstrates that PtmxGuard can defense privilege escalation attack effectively.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

PtmxGuard: An Improved Method for Android Kernel to Prevent Privilege Escalation Attack

Kong

Liu

2017

ITM Web Conf.

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“…Even Apple's iOS and Google's Android 1 mobile operating systems have implemented ASLR [20], though Android's low entropy has been found to be ineffective against all but the simplest of attacks [21]. With so many operating systems and therefore such a large portion of users relying on ASLR, it is important to investigate how well such implementations secure their environments.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

ASLR: How Robust Is the Randomness?

Ganz

Peisert

2017

2017 IEEE Cybersecurity Development (SecDev)

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Abstract-This paper examines the security provided by different implementations of Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). ASLR is a security mechanism that increases control-flow integrity by making it more difficult for an attacker to properly execute a buffer-overflow attack, even in systems with vulnerable software. The strength of ASLR lies in the randomness of the offsets it produces in memory layouts. We compare multiple operating systems, each compiled for two different hardware architectures, and measure the amount of entropy provided to a vulnerable application. Our paper is the first publication that we are aware of that quantitatively compares the entropy of different ASLR implementations. In addition, we provide a method for remotely assessing the efficacy of a particular security feature on systems that are otherwise unavailable for analysis, and highlight the need for independent evaluation of security mechanisms.

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“…Liebergeld and Lange [17] discuss the risks that users run if they root their Android devices while Rogers [22] provides a similar discussion of some of the dangers of jailbreaking an iOS device. Since neither Android nor iOS are designed to have administration accounts running, despite being both based on Unix-related kernels (Linux and XNU, respectively) once the systems have been hacked to expose these administrator-level accounts, they are more likely to be vulnerable to external hacking.…”

Section: Direct Security Risks Of Rooting/jailbreakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Possessing Mobile Devices

Adams

2015

IEEE Secur. Privacy

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Smartphones and tablet computers have an ownership model more akin to that of games consoles such as the Sony PlayStation than the PC. Given the ubiquity of these devices and their very broad capabilities and usage, this leaves users vulnerable to significant security and privacy violations. Rather than users possessing these devices, the devices are possessed by multiple third parties, to the detriment of users' rights.

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Android Security, Pitfalls and Lessons Learned

Cited by 13 publications

References 3 publications

PtmxGuard: An Improved Method for Android Kernel to Prevent Privilege Escalation Attack

PtmxGuard: An Improved Method for Android Kernel to Prevent Privilege Escalation Attack

ASLR: How Robust Is the Randomness?

Possessing Mobile Devices

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