# Android Information Leak



## Tarkus.Z (Jun 6, 2011)

This is from a message on the bugtraq list.

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Vulnerability Description
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We found that any android application can read all world-readable files in the "/proc" directory without specifying any permissions in their manifest files. This can leak sensitive information. For example, if the user is not using a network proxy, a malicious application without any permission to access the user's browsing history can find the websites the user visits by simply periodically reading "/proc/net/tcp".

Even if the user uses a network proxy we found that a malicious application can identify the websites the user visits by periodically monitoring the browser process's memory usage through "/proc/<pid>/statm" and comparing the measurements with pre-computed signatures. We also found that a malicious application can measure the inter key-stroke timings of user's typing by simply monitoring scheduling statistics from "/proc/<pid>/status".

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Credits
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Vulnerabilities found and advisory written by Suman Jana and Vitaly Shmatikov.

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Reference
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http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~suman/publications/oakland12/memento.pdf

"Memento: Learning Secrets from Process Footprints"
by Suman Jana and Vitaly Shmatikov
To appear in IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2012


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