Bulletproof Android: Practical Advice for Building Secure Apps

Battle-Tested Best Practices for Securing Android Apps throughout the Development Lifecycle

 

Android’s immense popularity has made it today’s #1 target for attack: high-profile victims include eHarmony, Facebook, and Delta Airlines, just to name a few. Today, every Android app needs to resist aggressive attacks and protect data, and in Bulletproof Android™, Godfrey Nolan shows you how.

 

Unlike “black hat/gray hat” books, which focus on breaking code, this guide brings together complete best practices for hardening code throughout the entire development lifecycle. Using detailed examples from hundreds of apps he has personally audited, Nolan identifies common “anti-patterns” that expose apps to attack, and then demonstrates more secure solutions.

 

Nolan covers authentication, networking, databases, server attacks, libraries, hardware, and more. He illuminates each technique with code examples, offering expert advice on implementation and trade-offs. Each topic is supported with a complete sample app, which demonstrates real security problems and solutions.

 

Learn how to

• Apply core practices for securing the platform
• Protect code, algorithms, and business rules from reverse engineering
• Eliminate hardcoding of keys, APIs, and other static data
• Eradicate extraneous data from production APKs
• Overcome the unique challenges of mobile authentication and login
• Transmit information securely using SSL
• Prevent man-in-the-middle attacks
• Safely store data in SQLite databases
• Prevent attacks against web servers and services
• Avoid side-channel data leakage through third-party libraries
• Secure APKs running on diverse devices and Android versions
• Achieve HIPAA or FIPS compliance
• Harden devices with encryption, SELinux, Knox, and MDM
• Preview emerging attacks and countermeasures

This guide is a perfect complement to Nolan’s Android™ Security Essentials LiveLessons (video training; ISBN-13: 978-0-13-382904-4) and reflects new risks that have been identified since the LiveLessons were released.

Godfrey Nolan is the founder and president of the mobile and web development company RIIS LLC based in Troy, Michigan, and Belfast, Northern Ireland. This is his fourth book. He has had a healthy obsession with reverse engineering bytecode since he wrote "Decompile Once, Run Anywhere," which first appeared in Web Techniques magazine way back in September 1997. Godfrey is originally from Dublin, Ireland.