Android Hacker's Handbook

577 Pages·2014·9.03 MB·English

by  Dan Sullivan, Joshua J. Drake, Zach Lanier, Stephen A. Ridley

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Android Hacker’s Handbook
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Android Hacker’s
Handbook
Joshua J. Drake
Pau Oliva Fora
Zach Lanier
Collin Mulliner
Stephen A. Ridley
Georg Wicherski
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Android Hacker’s Handbook
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ISBN: 978-1-118-60864-7
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About the Authors
Joshua J. Drake is a Director of Research Science at Accuvant LABS. Joshua
focuses on original research in areas such as reverse engineering and the analy-
sis, discovery, and exploitation of security vulnerabilities. He has over 10 years
of experience in the information security f eld including researching Linux
security since 1994, researching Android security since 2009, and consulting
with major Android OEMs since 2012. In prior roles, he served at Metasploit
and VeriSign’s iDefense Labs. At BlackHat USA 2012, Georg and Joshua demon-
strated successfully exploiting the Android 4.0.1 browser via NFC. Joshua spoke
at REcon, CanSecWest, RSA, Ruxcon/Breakpoint, Toorcon, and DerbyCon. He
won Pwn2Own in 2013 and won the DefCon 18 CTF with the ACME Pharm
team in 2010.
Pau Oliva Fora is a Mobile Security Engineer with viaForensics. He has pre-
viously worked as R+D Engineer in a wireless provider. He has been actively
researching security aspects on the Android operating system since its debut
with the T-Mobile G1 on October 2008. His passion for smartphone security has
manifested itself not just in the numerous exploits and tools he has authored
but in other ways, such as serving as a moderator for the very popular XDA-
Developers forum even before Android existed. In his work, he has provided
consultation to major Android OEMs. His close involvement with and observa-
tion of the mobile security communities has him particularly excited to be a
part of pulling together a book of this nature.
Zach Lanier is a Senior Security Researcher at Duo Security. Zach has
been involved in various areas of information security for over 10 years. He
has been conducting mobile and embedded security research since 2009,
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vi About the Authors
ranging from app security, to platform security (especially Android), to device,
network, and carrier security. His areas of research interest include both
offensive and defensive techniques, as well as privacy-enhancing technologies.
He has presented at various public and private industry conferences, such
as BlackHat, DEFCON, ShmooCon, RSA, Intel Security Conference, Amazon
ZonCon, and more.
Collin Mulliner is a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University. His
main interest lies in security and privacy of mobile and embedded systems with
an emphasis on mobile and smartphones. His early work dates back to 1997, when
he developed applications for Palm OS. Collin is known for his work on the (in)
security of the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and the Short Message
Service (SMS). In the past he was mostly interested in vulnerability analysis and
offensive security but recently switched his focus the defensive side to develop
mitigations and countermeasures. Collin received a Ph.D. in computer science
from Technische Universität Berlin; earlier he completed his M.S. and B.S. in
computer science at UC Santa Barbara and FH Darmstadt.
Ridley (as his colleagues refer to him) is a security researcher and author with
more than 10 years of experience in software development, software security, and
reverse engineering. In that last few years Stephen has presented his research
and spoken about reverse engineering and software security on every continent
(except Antarctica). Previously Stephen served as the Chief Information Security
Off cer of Simple.com, a new kind of online bank. Before that, Stephen was
senior researcher at Matasano Security and a founding member of the Security
and Mission Assurance (SMA) group at a major U.S defense contractor, where
he specialized in vulnerability research, reverse engineering, and “offensive
software” in support of the U.S. Defense and Intelligence community. At pres-
ent, Stephen is principal researcher at Xipiter (an information security R&D
f rm that has also developed a new kind of low-power smart-sensor device).
Recently, Stephen and his work have been featured on NPR and NBC and in
Wired, the Washington Post, Fast Company, VentureBeat, Slashdot, The Register, and
other publications.
Georg Wicherski is Senior Security Researcher at CrowdStrike. Georg
particularly enjoys tinkering with the low-level parts in computer security;
hand-tuning custom-written shellcode and getting the last percent in exploit
reliability stable. Before joining CrowdStrike, Georg worked at Kaspersky and
McAfee. At BlackHat USA 2012, Joshua and Georg demonstrated successfully
exploiting the Android 4.0.1 browser via NFC. He spoke at REcon, SyScan,
BlackHat USA and Japan, 26C3, ph-Neutral, INBOT, and various other confer-
ences. With his local CTF team 0ldEur0pe, he participated in countless and won
numerous competitions.
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About the Technical Editor
Rob Shimonski (www.shimonski.com) is a best-selling author and editor with
over 15 years’ experience developing, producing and distributing print media
in the form of books, magazines, and periodicals. To date, Rob has successfully
created over 100 books that are currently in circulation. Rob has worked for
countless companies that include CompTIA, Microsoft, Wiley, McGraw Hill
Education, Cisco, the National Security Agency, and Digidesign.
Rob has over 20 years’ experience working in IT, networking, systems, and
security. He is a veteran of the US military and has been entrenched in security
topics for his entire professional career. In the military Rob was assigned to a
communications (radio) battalion supporting training efforts and exercises.
Having worked with mobile phones practically since their inception, Rob is an
expert in mobile phone development and security.
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