NaCLDroid: Native code isolation for android applications

Elias Athanasopoulos, Vasileios P. Kemerlis, Georgios Portokalidis, Angelos D. Keromytis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Android apps frequently incorporate third-party libraries that contain native code; this not only facilitates rapid application development and distribution, but also provides new ways to generate revenue. As a matter of fact, one in two apps in Google Play are linked with a library providing ad network services. However, linking applications with third-party code can have severe security implications: malicious libraries written in native code can exfiltrate sensitive information from a running app, or completely modify the execution runtime, since all native code is mapped inside the same address space with the execution environment, namely the Dalvik/ART VM. We propose NaClDroid, a framework that addresses these problems, while still allowing apps to include third-party code. NaClDroidprevents malicious native-code libraries from hijacking Android applications using Software Fault Isolation. More specifically, we place all native code in a Native Client sandbox that prevents unconstrained reads, or writes, inside the process address space. NaClDroidhas little overhead; for native code running inside the NaCl sandbox the slowdown is less than 10% on average.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputer Security - 21st European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2016, Proceedings
EditorsSokratis Katsikas, Catherine Meadows, Ioannis Askoxylakis, Sotiris Ioannidis
Pages422-439
Number of pages18
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Event21st European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2016 - Heraklion, Greece
Duration: 26 Sep 201630 Sep 2016

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9878 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference21st European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2016
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityHeraklion
Period26/09/1630/09/16

Keywords

  • Android
  • NaCl
  • SFI

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