Android Device Security: Sandboxing, Rooting, and Attestation Explained
As Android developers, understanding device security is essential to protect our apps and users. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore Android’s security architecture, including sandboxing, rooting and jailbreaking, and how to implement device attestation using SafetyNet and Play Integrity. We’ll cover each topic in detail, providing code snippets and best practices, following. What is Sandboxing in Android? Sandboxing is the security mechanism that isolates each app’s code and data from other apps and from the underlying system. In Android, this ensures that one app cannot freely read or modify another app’s private data or perform privileged operations unless explicit permissions or IPC channels are used. High-Level Idea Each app runs in its own isolated environment with: Its own Linux user ID (UID) and process. Its own private data directory (e.g., /data/data/<package_name>/ ). By default: One app cannot directly access another app’s files. An app cannot perfo...