Why password is not encrypted?

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago

I browsed the preferences.xml file and found that my password is stored without 
encryption. Is there any way we can encrypt the password before storing in the 
device?

Thanks for the free app
Ramakrishnan

Original issue reported on code.google.com by grk...@gmail.com on 16 Aug 2011 at 10:44

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago

Hi Ramakrishnan

Thank you for your message and using my app. I do know that the preferences are 
saved on the device in the clear. It is possible that according to the Android 
design this "might" be ok - see this comment (stolen from Stackoverflow - 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6355003/android-encrypt-password )

----Now, on to the secureness of storing the password (what follows is valid 
for both storing the password in SharedPreferences and in AccountManager). As 
long as the device on which your application is running is not rooted, it is 
completely secure. No other app but yours can read the password. You can't even 
read the password if you connect the phone to a PC using a USB cable and use 
adb pull to try and get the respective file.
----However, if the phone is rooted, any app that gets root access can read the 
password. Also, adb pull works, and you can get to the password in seconds.

Now given this I have two options

- Encrypt the password before storing it in the preferences file. But given 
that my app is open source, not sure if this even makes sense, since all 
someone has to do is lookup the source code and they can find out the key that 
is used to encrypt the password. Also note that on a rooted phone, someone 
could very easily access ALL the passwords that are stored in the 
AccountManager (provided the phone is rooted) - see 
http://security-n-tech.blogspot.com/2011/01/security-issue-exposed-by-android.ht
ml

- Use the account manager to store the password. 
I might end up going down this route, since almost all applications seem to 
trust the AccountManager with their passwords (though it is not secure in a 
rooted phone).

Do let me know your thoughts.

Regards
Vivek

Original comment by viveki...@gmail.com on 23 Aug 2011 at 11:15

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago

Hi Vivek,
       Thanks a lot for your detailed reply. Now My worry about security has increased as I'm using many apps which need root permission.
       Though I'm not an android developer, I have few suggesstion. Is it possible to have an encryption key which is dynamic? The program should choose the key based on some unique device property like IMEI number or UID. 

Correct me if I am wrong.

-Ramakrishnan

Original comment by grk...@gmail.com on 24 Aug 2011 at 10:25

1devil-designs / corporateaddressbook

Why password is not encrypted? #68