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Android Attacks

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Insecure Data Storage
• Storing sensitive information on device – a
major threat
• Phone can be hacked or stolen
• Imagine site access, username, passwords,
tokens etc. get harvested
• Malware used to attack local system and fetch
information out.
• What are the options?

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Insecure calls
• Storage can be accessed by third party
• If device is rooted then access to sensitive
information
• Poor permission can allow cross access
• One app accessing information of other
• Information not encrypted

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Bird eye view

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Storage calls
• Shared Preferences
– Store private primitive data in key-value pairs.
• Internal Storage
– Store private data on the device memory.
• External Storage
– Store public data on the shared external storage.
• SQLite Databases
– Store structured data in a private database.
• Network Connection
– Store data on the web with your own network server.

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Accessing with adb
# cd bank.One
cd bank.One
# ls
ls
cache
databases
files
lib
# cd files
cd files
# ls
ls
PublicKey
remember
settings
temp_file
# cat remember
cat remember
jack
jack123#
Got user/pass in clear text

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Weak Server Side Controls
• Backend Application Security
• Protocols
• OWASP Top 10 for AppSec

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Analyzing HTTP traffic
• Security assessment needs sound knowledge
of HTTP analysis
• Tools and mind needed to analyze the traffic
• What to look for? – methods, cookie,
querysting etc.
• All part of HTTP – Response analysis is equally
important.

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JSON
• JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) - a
lightweight data-interchange format
• Based on JavaScript Programming Language
(Standard ECMA-262)
• Completely language independent
• C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#,
Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many
others.
• Interchangeable is the Key.

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JSON
– object
• {}
{ members }
– members
• pair
pair , members
– pair
• string : value
– array
• []
[ elements ]
• elements
• value
value ,
elements
• value
• string
number
object
array
true
false
null

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JSON
• Example
{ "firstName": "John", "lastName": "Smith",
"address": { "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street",
"city": "New York", "state": "NY", "postalCode":
10021 }, "phoneNumbers": [ "212 732-1234", "646
123-4567" ] }

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JSON call
• Calling JSON services

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JSON fetch
• Fetch attribute

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Insufficient Transport Layer Protection
• Poor or no Encryption during transit
• Poor certification validations
• Man in the middle opening
• Traffic over HTTP
• Token passing
• Device ID over poor channel

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Session with token only

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Client Side Injection
• Native or Web apps
– Using poor libs
– Abusing APIs
• Popular injections – XSS, SQLi, XPATH etc.
• Payment and SMS
• Mixed usage
– Using webview

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SQLite

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What is SQLite?
• SQLite is an in-process library that implements a self-
contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL
database engine.
• It is the database which is zero configured , that means like
other database you do not need to configure it in your
system.
• At the end, it is a comma separated file (CSV file)

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SQLite Commands
• The standard SQLite commands to interact with relational
databases are similar as SQL.
• They are CREATE, SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and
DROP.
• Data Manipulation Language
Command Description
INSERT Creates a record
UPDATE Modifies records
DELETE Deletes records

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Cont.
• Data Query Language:
• Data Definition Language:
Command Description
SELECT Retrieves certain records from one or
more tables
Command Description
CREATE Creates a new table, a view of a table,
or other object in database
ALTER Modifies an existing database object,
such as a table.
DROP Deletes an entire table, a view of a
table or other object in the database.

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SQLite – Create Database
• The following command will create a new database or will
open the database if it has been created.
• sqlite3 [database name].db

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Retrieving Master Table
• This command will retrieve the master table.
• For example:-
variable=* FROM SQLITE_MASTER; --

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SQLite Version
• This command retrieves the version number
of the db.

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SQLite – Create Table
• For example:- create table [newtablename](id int, name text);
• By using .tables on the command shell the newly created
designation table is shown.

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SQLite – Drop Table
• drop table users;--

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SQLite – Insert Query
• INSERT INTO TABLE_NAME (column1, column2,
column3,...Ncolumn) VALUES (value1, value2,
value3,...Nvalue);

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Extending/Appending queries
• By altering the select query the injected DELETE query
removes all records from the company table.

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SQLite – OR 1=1
• ‘* from [tablename] where id=1 OR 1=1;’

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Adding User
• insert into users values(15,’user15’)

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Side Channel Data Leakage
• Platform issues – sandboxing or disable
controls
– Cache
– Logs, Keystrokes, screenshots etc.
– Temp files
• 3rd
Party libs (AD networks and analytics)

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Unauthorized Dialing/SMS

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Unauthorized Dialing/SMS
• Social Engineering using Mobile Devices
• Attacker plays with user’s mind
• User installs application
• Application sends premium rate SMS or a
premium rate phone call to unknown number
• Used by Malware/Trojans

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GGTracker
• June 2010
• Another Application which sends
International SMS
• One SMS Costs – 40 USD (NOK 200)
• Application Sends Premium SMS to US
numbers

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UI Impersonation

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UI Impersonation
• Attack has been there since long
• On a mobile stack, known as UI
impersonation
• Other names are Phishing Attack, ClickJacking
• Attacker plays with user’s mind and try to
impersonate as other user or other
application

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UI Impersonation
• Victim looses credit card information or
authentication credentials or secret
• One application can create local PUSH
notification as it is created from apple store
• Classic example is - Netflix Application in
AppStore
• Flow in review process of AppStore – Anyone
can name anything to their application

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NetFlix
• Oct -2011
• Steals users “netflix” account information
• Application shows error message to user
“Compatibility issues with the user’s
hardware” when user enters username and
password and uninstalls itself
• More than 10000 users lost their details in a
week

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Activity Monitoring

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Activity Monitoring
• Sending a blind carbon copy of each email to
attacker
• Listening all phone calls
• Email contact list, pictures to attacker
• Read all emails stored on the device
• Usual intension of Spyware/Trojans

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Activity Monitoring
• Attacker can monitor –
– Audio Files
– Video
– Pictures
– Location
– Contact List
– Call/Browser/SMS History
– Data files

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Android.Pjapps
• Early 2010
• Steal/Change users information
• PjApps Application –
• Send and monitor incoming SMS messages
• Read/write to the user's browsing history and
bookmarks
• Install packages and Open Sockets
• Write to external storage
• Read the phone's state

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System Modification

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System Modification
• Application will attempt to modify system
configuration to hide itself (Historically this is
known as ROOTKIT)
• Configuration changes makes certain attack
possible i.e. –
– Modifying device proxy to get user’s activity
monitoring
– Configure BCC email sending to attacker

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Information in Common Services

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Information in Common Services
• KeyBoard, Clipboard are shared amongst all
the applications.
• Information stored in clipboard can be
accessed by all the application
• Sensitive information should not be allowed
to copy/paste in the application

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Logical Issues

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Logical Issues
• Authentication flags and privilege escalations
at application layer
• Critical parameter manipulation and access to
unauthorized information/content
• Business constraint exploitation
• Identity or profile extraction
• Denial of Services (DoS) with business logic

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In Memory Analysis

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In memory analysis
• Using in built command in ADB named
“dumpsys”
• Command to get memory dump –
# Dumpsys meminfo
• Can be run only by “su” (Rooting a device is
mandatory)

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Uncovering vulnerability from
Manifest File

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Quick Recap of Manifest tags
• Manifest
• Application
• Activity
• Activity-alias
• Receiver
• Service
• Uses-permission

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Decompiling Android Applications

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Decompiling android application
• Using Apktool -
http://code.google.com/p/android-apktool/
• Using Dex2Jar -
http://code.google.com/p/dex2jar/
• Using aapt (Bundled with Android SDK)

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Use Apktool to convert the XML to readable format
Android manifest file:
APK Tool

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Use dex2jar to convert classes.dex file in the extracted folder to .class files
Use JAD to convert the class files into JAVA files
Dex2Jar and JAD

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Debuggable flag in Android
• One of the key attribute in android manifest
file
• Under “application” section
• Describes debugging in enabled
• If “Debuggable”attribute is set o true, the
application will try to connect to a local unix
socket “@jdwp-control”
• Using JDWP, It is possible to gain full access to
the Java process and execute arbitrary code
in the context of the debugable application

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CheckDebuggable Script
• Checks in APK whether debuggable is enabled
• Script can be found at –
http://www.espheresecurity.com/resourcest
ools.html
• Paper can be found at -
http://www.espheresecurity.com/CheckDebu
ggable.pdf

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Conclusion