After thoroughly writing in detail about WordPress security, windows security and android security now is the time to write about security tips for an application developer. In android developing of a good android application can be monetised to have good amount of income on one side and if all of the security parameters are not been seen in complete detail then for sure, attackers do attack popular apps and if not protected correctly, then in the long run Google might blacklisted yours apps from appearing in Google Play Store.

Before building up any application most of the application developers knew that due to built-in security measures, the performance impact of security issues with applications reduces significantly. Android system runs most of these apps in its ecosystem where it works with sandboxing security mechanisms to provide performance improvements and security check-ups before an application runs with android. Besides, it does have file system permissions and restrictions issues attached to it which can make it more secure than ever before.

Android runs every application within perimeters of Android Application Sandbox which isolates each and every app from other apps while running in the system. Most of the apps have to run within specific application frameworks such as secure IPC, cryptography and permissions to help android system running in tandem with application management.

There is various improved technology that runs with apps in order to prevent common memory management errors and this also helps to reduce the time and the scope of attackers. Latest versions of Android runs with encrypted file management system that helps it to improve performance against common data loss and memory mismanagement of apps. In the case of lost or stolen device, an encrypted file system helps to make difficult for hackers to read data.
Android runs various user granted permissions of management of apps to help to minimise data leaks.

Android security best practices for application developers:

Before discussing how data works with apps, there are fundamental principles of the store of data within android eco-system. There are three types of storage management in Android, first one is internal storage, then external storage and then storage for content providers. Internal storage for apps is only limited to file you create with app and android has its own security restrictions implemented in it and it works nicely. If you want to share your app data then use the content provider to make this process of sharing data easier.

Here your app can find dynamic permission in term of reading and write access to work your app in a fast manner. Further in order to make application data encrypted then use the local key file to make it encrypted so that most of the data will not be directly accessible by the application. In order to further improve your system, you can place the key in key store and put a password and can protect the lost device with file encryption policies.

When the files of the app are stored in external storages this can be read and write anywhere as it can be removed and then place it with various different kinds of devices starting from laptop, notebook and so on. As an application developer do not allow apps to store sensitive pieces of information such as passwords and other valuable pieces of information in external storages.

App developers should initiate input validation process in their app so that data coming from sources should be reviewed and easily configurable to stop data coming in from untrusted sources. All of the class files of the app should be stored inside internal storages, not external storages. This should be similar to that of executable files as these measures are needed for further improvement of security of apps.

When app loads file in external storage then files should load in the form of encryption as well as cryptographically verified in order to initiate the process of complete input validation. If your application does not provide such security measures then it is better to stop dynamic loading of apps in external storages.

The third storage option is to use content providers. It is limited to your own application and most of these stays with cloud mechanisms. While configuring your apps you can set your android: exported attribute to true to allow other apps to read your data. In this case, you have to specify permissions of your data to be read by other apps. If you want to share data of content provider within your apps then android:protectionLevel attribute to be set to signature permission and when the application is signed then it automatically signed with similar signature protection logging.

If you want to have more of granular and complete access then you can use attributes and methods in a similar manner so that most of these work incoherent and secure manner. Do not take lightly about reading and write permissions of data as this can help attackers by going log of phone numbers to modify any row and this can make most of that app vulnerable.

That is why fully control over reading and write of rules in order to stop predictable nature of the app. Basic android protection works with sandboxing of each and every app so that each of app runs in its own scope. If an app does need additional permissions then they go for additional permission out of the sandbox. The example is that if some app does need access to camera app then this needs additional permissions over sandbox permission.

In order to reduce the risk of application permissions which in a way protect the app from spurning out additional information so it is important to reduce the number of permissions an app needs. This, in turn, provides user accessible and reduce the risk of prone to attacks from hackers. Remove unnecessary application permissions and if you see that some of the permissions that are there in the app do not need to app to function then remove those permissions immediately.

A successful app is that which does not require any permissions for user and if you are able to build that then it is better always as that app would be darling of masses as well as hackers would find it difficult to crack. When an app has to rely heavily on too much of data permission then due to the flow of so much of data over IPC, the hacker could find the route to access due to the availability of so much of data.

Most of the system-defined applications do cover most of the security situations. In a way, in order to work applications do consider to use fewer application permissions as and when needed, so that security efficiency does work in a perfect manner.

In android application framework, there is a new permission known as ‘signature protection level’ and use that which look for signed applications to allow or disallow other applications to work with it. If you are for sure that most of these permissions do work in the correct manner and you want to permit dynamic application permission then use ‘addPermission()’ method instead.

In this later situations, you would be facing a plenty of complexities which you need to insulate app to work better. Consider adding a string to permission so that while user adding any such pieces of information there would another security level clearance within the application. These permission strong need to be localised and should be in most of these languages so that users will be able to understand about it precisely.

The application developer must precisely and clearly provide information and the permissions it allows to choose by users so that they would know clearly about the severity of security considerations while allowing apps to runs within it.

These are dangerous permission levels as most of these time it is for users to allow such permissions as they might perceive the amount of easiness of doing this but in reality, they might provide permissions for apps which might not be installed and that can seriously pose the severe level of attacks from the distance.

That is why as application developers it is important to skips these levels and pose a serious and confusing task of allowing or disallowing functions when applications permissions are needed.

Network transactions and network security:

When the developer works to create an app for network transactions than most important part of these apps is to provide network security as these apps inherently use of coherent network security. Generally, most of the network transactions are meant for security risks, as even if transactions becomes encrypted still it comes out from private users most of the times unaware of network security.

It is important for apps to observe network best practices as most of the people who deal with network transactions always aware of such privacy invasions and for this app need to observe this in order to make it run and work well. Users know which applications are making their data secure and for this as the app in order to gain immense popularity all of these best practices need to be implemented.

Internet networking with Android is extremely different from Linux and Windows networking. It is important for apps to use HTTPS protocol so that data send and receive should be done in completely encrypted manner.

Mobile services most of the times connect to network that is not secured such as the case of public Wi-Fi hotspots which are not secure and there are chances of data-breaching which might make the most of app if they do not use secure protocol such as ‘HttpsURLConnection’ in order to completely secure data to and from apps.

Android application developer providers even more secure connectivity such as ‘SSL Socket’ which is authenticated and encrypted level connectivity which does provide additional level security and reject connectivity in the case of non-encrypted connections.

It is important in order to secure applications as well as that of making the application data secure fully encrypted connectivity with authenticated and secure level socket networking makes the app secure not only for developers but also for users to secure their important data.

As an application developer, you should not use localhost network ports to use data communications. It is quite dangerous as this will interfere with other apps and that can be very much helpful for attackers. If you want this approach then use service request through accessibility feature and this can be easy does with ‘Service’ protocol.

Make application to stop data even received from non-secure ‘HTTP’ protocol so as to make application secure. If you want to send notifications through your apps then you can use ‘Google Cloud Messaging’ to securely send and receive of data from the app.

Do not use unauthenticated SMS data to perform commands within the application. Most of the times normal SMS commands are not authenticated and most of the times it does take some time to detect the origin of the request of SMS command. There are chances of ‘READ_SMS’ command through other apps this can be taken over entirely from another app.

Most of the apps perform server validations before allowance of any connectivity to work and perform, but in the case of the perfect security, environment apps should perform sufficient input validations in order to reduce exposure of applications.

Android does provide series of security measures but when such devices are connected with different devices which most of do not perform input validations then for sure it is going to disturb this performance of security issues.

The most common problem related with apps in regards to security issues are buffer overflows where Android does has its safeguard for such but those are not full proof. Search for pointers in your app and carefully managed those as well as managing buffers to stay at the minimum and does not reach to the stages of overflow in order to secure apps to perform efficiently with almost full-proof security.

Javascript and SQL are most dangerous and handle these scripts with complete care as these are dynamic and string-based languages, which mainly depends upon devices and input validations and proof them from script injection. Script injection or code injection comes from full exploitations of computer bug through the invalid data stream.

In this way course of execution of app completely changes. That is why apps should send and receive trusted data as input to users so that these would be decrypted incorrect manner.

If code injection by app developers has not been managed properly then it can lead to buffer overflows, denial of service attacks and that can lead to attackers taking the entire control of data of application content providers and this can result in complete failure of apps and privacy of users.

Due to this most of times, complete failures to identify the proper names of character and that makes complete shut down of content space and this in a way make headway to create difficulties within the specimen of apps environments.

It leads to privilege escalation with administrative privileges and this can lead to unauthorised access to system settings of the app. Then, it can modify database and SQL parameters completely. This can range to complete defacement of the app or complete replacement of data of app. This result to complete colony of server-side and installing server-side scripting code such as through PHO files.

It completely moves the control of your app into hands of attackers and due to privilege escalations yours, app move to dangerously security privileges and this can completely make your app vulnerable.

Use APIs such an application protocol interface in order to input into the database and when you find any input stream is causing security problems then it is better to revoke that API and this will make your system completely secure. It is important to enforce language separation in order to make it perform differently within the geopolitical level to work incorrect and functional manners.

Always check for input validations and make whitelisting of input validations to perform and provide more and more security to the application protocol. By enforcing language separation you provide static definition to dynamic files and this reduces the attack from country or language specific.

Use and enforce output encoding such as to and from sending and receiving of data through encrypted mechanisms help to reduce code injection. Always perform dynamic look out for vulnerabilities and look for object injection, dynamic evaluation of vulnerabilities,

find out whether there is the presence of any such remote injection and format specifier injection of the uncontrolled format string and stop those before these are executed on server side.

In these cases, the most safer alternative is to use application protocol layer gateway so as to use external program access into app directly without through shell approach as this becomes safer. In this way, the entire possibility of shell injection of code stops.