Researchers Target Shared Memory to Hack Android Apps

  • 22 August 2014
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By Eduard Kovacs on August 22, 2014
 
 
Researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Riverside have developed a new attack method that can be used to obtain sensitive information from applications running on Android and likely other operating systems.
Dubbed "UI state interference attack," the method relies on exploiting what experts call a "newly- discovered public side channel," namely the shared memory, which enables various processes running on the operating system to share data between them. In this case, the problem is a design flaw in graphical user interface (GUI) frameworks that can be used to determine every UI state change through this shared memory, which can be accessed without special permissions.
"The assumption has always been that [the apps installed on a device] can’t interfere with each other easily," explained Zhiyun Qian, an assistant professor at UC Riverside and one of the researchers involved in the project. "We show that assumption is not correct and one app can in fact significantly impact another and result in harmful consequences for the user."
The researchers have showed that an attacker can use a malicious Android app, which only requests minimal permissions, to harvest data entered by users into other applications. The attacker's program runs in the background and monitors changes in shared memory. These changes are then correlated to various activities performed by the victim, such as logging in to an account or taking a picture.
 
SecurityWeek/ full read here/ http://www.securityweek.com/researchers-target-shared-memory-hack-android-apps

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