Addresses a long-overdue privacy issue in the Android OS

May 8, 2018 14:50 GMT  ·  By

Google is working on making its Linux-based Android operating system more secure and privacy-aware, and the next major release could finally address a long-overdue privacy issue in the OS.

We're talking here about the fact that right now Android apps can monitor your network activity without even asking your permission to do so. According to a report from the XDA Developers website, apps cannot detect network calls content, but they can establish on what server you are connected by sniffing both incoming and outgoing connections.

Basically, Android apps that have network access are capable of intercepting other Android apps you might have installed on your device when they try to connect to a certain server. You can even see which Android apps are monitoring your network activity by using an app like Netstat.

We won't go into more details as most probably many of you out there are aware of this major privacy issue, which clearly Google tries to patch by implementing new rules in the SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) Linux kernel security module to restrict Android apps from monitoring your network activity. The first Android version to see the new security enhancements is Android P.

Some custom ROMs already include these security features

The new SELinux rules Google wants to implement in the upcoming Android P operating system is no news to us, as there are several custom Android ROMs out there that already include them for years now. So if you're using such a ROM, most probably you won't have to deal with these privacy issues, but many Android users out there do, and it's a major privacy flaw that needs to be patched.

A recent commit in Android Open Source Project (AOSP) shows that Google will finally restrict Android apps from accessing /proc/net, a place inside the Android mobile operating system where Linux kernel output related to your network activity is being stored. Right now, current versions of Google's Android OS has no restrictions in place to block apps from accessing /proc/net.