Secure Ad Hoc Networking on an Android Platform
Abstract
Android is a quickly maturing open source platform that is being widely adopted by individuals and by organisations (including Defence). This document describes a proto- type implementation of a secure ad hoc networking system for Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) Android platforms with a focus on extensibility and security. This implementa- tion utilises Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth to create secure, mutually authenticated ad hoc networks between devices for the sharing of information. The development work was conducted during a Swinburne University Industry-Based Learning (IBL) placement at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), under the latter's Industry Experience Placement (IEP) Program. One of the core issues surrounding Android involves the security of the operating system. Security-Enhanced Android (SE Android) aims to mitigate some of these issues by applying Mandatory Access Control (MAC) to Android. SE Android's MAC is currently applied to Android 4.4, however it is in permissive mode for most applications, and enforcing for root level applications only. In addition to the implicit protections provided by SE Android, we utilised SE Android's MAC to assist in securing our applications through the use of a global security policy. The policy restricts the permissions granted to our applications and other applications on the devices.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2014
- Accession Number
- ADA616946
Entities
People
- Angus Morton
- David Adie
- Paul Montague
Organizations
- Defence Science and Technology Group