Our own Senior Developer Scott Alexander-Bown recently co-authored the Android Security Cookbook, which covers a variety of topics including analyzing Android devices, operating systems and applications down to the code level for security vulnerabilities. It also offers measures that application developers can put in place to protect their applications and devices from common vulnerabilities and attacks.
As the book’s preface states:
“Android has been around in the public domain since 2005 and has seen massive growth in capability and complexity. Mobile smart phones in general now harbor very sensitive information about their users as well as access to their e-mails, text messages, and social and professional networking services. As with any software, this rise in capability and complexity also brings about a rise in security risk; the more powerful and more complex the software becomes, the harder they are to manage and adapt to the big bad world. “
Android Security Cookbook breaks down the processes used to exploit and remediate Android vulnerabilities in the form of detailed recipes and walkthroughs. Other topics covered include how to perform secure networking from within Android applications, how to reverse-engineer Android applications to find common vulnerabilities, and how to find and remediate common memory corruption vulnerabilities on ARM devices.
Scott’s greatest contributions are in the chapters dealing with protecting mobile applications, secure networking, and encryption and developing device administration policies.
We’d like to congratulate Scott on the book and would encourage Android developers and other professionals interested in the nuts and bolts of mobile security to check it out. Lots of great information to help make to mobile eco-system a safer environment. Feel free to contact Scott at @scottyab if you have any questions or would like to learn more about the book.